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She was even right about Amazi-Girl escalating things. Amazi-girl is even still trying to escalate things right now. Fortunately, Sal isn’t having any of it– Sal de-escalates it and just leaves.
Sal did not de-escelate anything. She threatened AG (a gen-u-ine Hollywood style I’m so cool death threat) and did everything she could to put AG on the defensive. In reality this ensures AG would double down on her actions.
Amber is not self-aware enough, certainly not in her AG persona, to see Sal’s ham fisted point. And such a statement coming from someone like Sal when there is clearly no love lost between them, is even less likely to be considered for it’s possible validity.
Sal’s inexperienced, actually really quite awful with people, and thinks she’s smarter than she is (damn but do I know that type) so she may not be doing it intentionally. Worse she’s working overtime to look cool – threaten her life, make my arrogant speech, put on my helmet and ride off on my motorcycle with a tight spin and a spray of gravel, I’m so cool. And ironically Sal’s ‘help’ would make things worse, just as she accuses AG of doing, and for the same reasons that her motivations are clouding her judgement.
Ok, I have to defend Amber a bit here. Joyce called her for help in a situation guaranteed to hit her dad-rage buttons. She knew she was out of her depth and I think would have been happy to draw the passing cops’ attention to the car, even knowing that she probably would have been arrested too. When the police were obviously going the wrong way, she thought it was totally up to her to rescue Becky. Yes, she has a superhero hammer and everything looks like a nail, but what exactly was *Sal’s* plan to stop the car? If they had arrived on a speeding bike with no Amazi-Girl involved, basically you still would have had Toe-dad with a gun, police going in the other direction, and no way to get Becky out. I thought no it’s possible for Amber to have serious issues that affect why and how she engages, but still be pretty darn heroic. She did more to help than anyone else, frankly Joyce included.
Why would she need a plan to stop the car? She has a motorbike and a mobile… she could follow at a distance and keep the cops updated on the kidnapping-in-progress. That’s kinda her point: she has nothing to prove by playing the hero and she was still better equipped to handle the job. Amber had no plan, no backup, no *thought* except her own need to save someone, and very nearly got everyone killed.
@Plasma Mongoose:
It’s pretty lazy to assume failure.
@Clif:
As there should be. Self Help is not to our advantage unless a state is so far-gone that if leaving is an option, you should take it, and ta that point the useful form of SElf Help is straight revolution. As terribly bigoted as police can be, the public will usually be worse, although not necessarily to the same people. As someone with shitty fucking odds with the police for a number of reasons, I’ll take it, over the days the mob got their way. Vigilantes are like dictators – it’s fine when they’re ‘virtuous’, but the second you get a bad one they’re fucking poison (And they’re basically all bad). Except unlike dictators, vigilantes encourage more vigilantes, thus increasing the number of ‘unvirtuous’ candidates you will get.
Well, at least then I’ll stop hearing my friends (and hell, me too) say “why is my kid growing up so fast?! I want him/her to stay little just a bit longer.”
Remember, according to the Buffer Watch he’s already writing strips in February of next year. Sending comics back in time to us is okay because comics are data, which makes this merely an Ontological Paradox.
But according to Pratchett’s L-Space Theorum, information has weight (Information = Knowledge. Knowledge = Power. Power = Energy. Energy = Matter. Matter = Mass.), and all mass distorts the spacetime continuum. So even sending data back in time causes certain ripples.
All in all, I think it’s impressive that Willis has been able to consistently hit the right day, let alone hour, considering that his time travel apparatus is made out of Transformers figures and powered by packets of Taco Bell Fire Sauce.
A certain amount of drift was inevitable, especially since his Flux Capacitor is just Generations Drift.
So, of course, I had to look up if there was a BttF Time Machine Transformer. Apparently there isn’t, but there is a Delorean named Swindler (and the TFWiki does not disappoint in having BttF jokes on his page).
Technically, not all matter has mass. Two known particles, photons and gluons, are massless, meaning the equation is dependent on the nature of the information being carried. Now, seeing as ‘knowledge’ is a subjective property, we can assume it is dependent on the presence of consciousness. And if it is ever scientifically proven that consciousness itself is a particle (referred to some as a psion, literally ‘thought particle’) then it is likely that consciousness is massless, else it would have been detected in observer-dependent quantum physics experiments. If, however conscioussness is the fifth fundemental force, making knowledge the force-carrier for consciousness, it is possible that knowledge has mass.
As far as the aforementioned time machine goes, it should be fine as long as he used G1 diecast construction (its a lost art), though i think it would run a bit more efficiently on Volcano sauce.
While photons and such rif-raf have no rest mass, they do have relativistic mass as evidenced by the fact that gravity bends light.
There is no evidence that consciousness is a particle and a moderate amount of evidence it is a brain state. Information on the other hand seems to be negative entropy which links it pretty solidly to the orginization of mass-energy.
Due to quantum theory then, information and anti-information can sponainouly form and cancel, but in the vacentity of a black hole, if the anti-information goes into the black hole it becomes unavailable to the rest of the universe and we are left with a small excess of information. This explains why the miniture black hole hidden in the center of the earth allows there to be enough information for life to exist on its surface. It also explains why the secret civilizations existing below the earth’s surface are more advnced; they have access to more free information.
According to the last What-If, if th e earth was made of protons and the moon electrons, the question falls apart because the energy needed to hold the electrons that close together would make a black hole, despite the particals haveing practicly no mass.
Force of any kind has mass, apparently.
Yeah, and she doesn’t care. Although to be fair there are times when knowing the “why” of a thing is trumped by the “what are we going to do about it”. Which is not to say origins should always be completely disregarded in the face of pragmatism, it’s just that figuring out how a wildfire got going is generally saved for when all the flames are out and the danger has passed.
“You’re a danger to others.”
“But I do this because–”
“No really, dial it back or I’ll do it for you.”
I can’t wait for an Amazigirl with a head injury and no transportation to make it away from the scene of a highway accident with a flood of police on the way. Then we’ll deal with the school side of it.
Does their history even matter now? Sal just saved her life.
At this point it feels wrong to even say “well I get why Amber hates her because past stuff” because Sal just kind of conclusively proven she’s not that person anymore (or more specifically, the person Amber decided she was).
Of course it matters. Just because Sal is a different person now doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t magically erase the psychological damage that’s been done.
It really, really sucks when your criminal nemesis has already been appropriately punished under the law, has reformed, and is getting her life back together as a productive member of society.
In other words, he’d be an authoritarian shithead who violates due process because of preconceived notions, and quite possibly being the thing that teaches her crime’s her only option because it’s all that can reasonably be expected of her.
i seem to remember, in the 90s cartoon (Harley’s Holiday), Batman was sad and sympathetic when Harley Quinn ended up (accidentally) in trouble after she served her time. but then again, Harley wasn’t the one who killed Batman’s parents, thus creating him. but it has always made me think that Batman is willing to believe someone can reform (otherwise why bother locking them up?)
It’s in her, but she’s not letting that anger at the world be her sole drive anymore. She’s made piece with that tendency and you see her struggle with it at points (most notably when Jason betrays her with his bad grade, when she was fighting with Malaya, and when Amazi-girl nearly got under her skin), but she tries to play it cool and find other ways around a problem besides violence.
Neither of them is free from that rage of injustice and painful abusive upbringing (with one albeit more abusive than the other), but Sal is a lot further along in her recognition and recovery. She’s seeing a fellow traveler making the same mistakes she did and that hurts her, because it’s always painful watching someone walk into the same spike traps you did and not being able to give them the map out of the dungeon.
Sal may have no idea why, but honestly, she isn’t wrong. Amazigirl could have injured someone seriously. Hell, her stunt could have KILLED Becky. Amazigirl needs to, honestly, grow up a bit and learn to actually control her anger instead of be controlled by it.
Agreed. And clearly, her being Amazi-Girl is NOT helping her work through any of her old issues. She needs to do something more healthy and less dangerous to deal with her problems.
Because every run-in with Sal is enough to send her into a panicked, hysterical state. So clearly, her dangerous vigilantism is NOT helping her deal with her old issues, as one tiny scratch to the surface causes them to all burst out as raw as ever. She needs HELP, not dangerous stunts on moving vehicles.
I really don’t understand why you’re so hell-bent on justifying her reckless, destructive, and, frankly, VERY illegal behavior. It’s not healthy or practical, and if she keeps it up, she or someone else is going to get badly hurt.
Because I disagree with your assesment of her behaviour.
I think she’s doing a lot of good, it might be destructive, but I always think it’s better to live a short life in the service of others than a long life for yourself.
There will always be risks, no matter how you live.
We see it here in that Amber has just chosen to discount it and focus on the initial image.
One of Amber’s worst behaviors is that she’s decided inconsistency will be the thing that will “ruin” Amazi-girl and corrupt her.
And the reason that that is worse than the self-destruction is that life is all about making small inconsistencies and growing by the points where the theory of morality struggles against reality. Making every “good” act something she MUST SUCCEED AT NO MATTER WHAT, leads her to undergo extremely life-threatening actions like today. Similarly, making it so that she is inflexible with her enforcement of rules in this persona is going to start being a toxic presence in her relationships.
And we see today the worst of it. When presented with evidence that would run counter to her narrative, she just elides right past it and chooses to stay angry and feels fully justified still viewing a grown-up version of a kid with a knife as some super nemesis. No “thank you citizen” or “despite your help, I had it under control”. Instead it’s just ignoring the admissions of help and antagonizations and picking of fights. Sal shows nothing but support, and Amazi-girl throw it back in her face because she needs to view Sal as bad to preserve her mythology of an unchanging narrative of good and evil, where the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys always come back and do wrong.
And this will start interfering with the good parts of her vigilanteism, because being inflexible and viewing all laws as equal to build a fiction of consistency is a great way to go from being that helpful local hero who knocks down harassers and bike thieves to some authoritarian clown in tights who harshes people smoking some weed or downing a beer.
Amber needs to allow Amazi-girl to have the same “inconsistencies” she extends to herself before its too late.
I don’t agree that Ambers decision is inconsistency that will ruin her, I think it is failure that she is afraid of.
I agree she’s inflexible in viewing herself as on one side and everyone else on the other, when she’s in her Amazi-Girl guise. It’s already interfering with her vigilantism as per her remarks previous that she can not let down anyone.
I think that she may know who and what Sal is to her based on her reaction when she woke up as Amber. That looked like recognition and fear.
When she snapped back to AG, the recognition is gone, but the knowledge remains although she won’t acknowledge it – a recurring pattern.
That incident shows a definite split in her two personalties maybe getting deeper?
Amber needs professional help before she kills herself or someone else.
I think Amazi-Girl is Amber’s overcompensation for her inaction during the convenience store robbery. Her best (and only?) friend was being held at knifepoint by another kid their own age, but she didn’t do anything but hide in the corner sniveling until after the police arrived. If Amazi-Girl was there, then Ethan would not have been hurt. Never mind that he wasn’t hurt anyway, and has since put the incident behind him. (He and Sal didn’t even recognize each other at the party a couple storylines ago!)
She reminds herself of the robbery every time she puts the costume on, lets the memory consume her, and uses it to fuel her determination toward unrealistic single-handed heroism. She let Ethan down that day years ago, and refuses to let anyone else down again, no matter the personal cost.
You’re right. And I would go further and say that there aren’t really any good parts of her vigilantism. It’s a wholly unhealthy and destructive activity.
But then, I’m pretty much a “due process” hard-liner.
Aye. Self Help is all well and good when its pointed at people who are committing violent crimes like robbery, but Amber’s already pointed it at people who she has no business being violent to. And it’s the inevitable thing tht starts to happen with Self Help.
Amber stopped some obvious crimes that should be, but she exalts Self Help, and even on her own, she has done some objectionable, wrong shit with that Self Help – And that’s the BEST case. There’s plenty of much worse ones (and the Best Case put someone in the hospital pointlessly)
“Making every “good” act something she MUST SUCCEED AT NO MATTER WHAT, leads her to undergo extremely life-threatening actions like today. ”
It also lead to Becky’s rescue. Why shouldn’t every good act be something you should succeed at no matter what ? I’ve always lived by that rule, and I think everyone would benefit from that line of thought.
Same with consistency. Life doesn’t HAVE to be inconsistent, that seems to me a modern thing that has spread through a combination of laziness and people not willing to commit to anything anymore.
Consistency and inflexibility is the not same though, I would agree she needs to learn more flexibility. But those other things you mention ? Those things make her a better person in my view.
Forgot this part of your post:
” No “thank you citizen” or “despite your help, I had it under control”. Instead it’s just ignoring the admissions of help and antagonizations and picking of fights. Sal shows nothing but support, and Amazi-girl throw it back in her face because she needs to view Sal as bad to preserve her mythology of an unchanging narrative of good and evil, where the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys always come back and do wrong.”
Well… it seems to me she is not even aware of the effort Sal went to, or even that she rescued her at all. Sal doesn’t get the chance to tell her, only that she got here away from the cops, and since her main reaction to conflict is to escape she would rather just ride away on her bike than try to wait until Amazi-Girl is calm enough to explain her situation.
Shame, since she was also very close to finding out where Amazi-Girl comes from, and that could’ve been helpful for them both I suppose.
Eh, for my analysis I was also counting on ToeDad’s bad choices being directly related to there being someone attached to / on top of the car, and that a police chase wouldn’t have ended the same way.
You seem hell bent on defending her, so I’m not going to argue really but add another point: Yes, Becky got saved. Yeah, it was badass and cool of Amazigirl. But now Amazigirl has been hit by a car (my friend just got in a got crash, he’s all banged up and he was actually in the car wearing a seatbelt), thrown off another car, snatched out of the air by a motorcycle, and almost got shot. Ignoring the results of her good actions (that were dangerous and irrationally done), the personal injuries she has just sustained are serious and could have handicapped her for life. She isn’t Bruce Wayne. She doesn’t have the money to get hurt continuously and go to a fancy Butler to take care of her.
Wouldn’t you agree there’s a better way to get through some mental issues other than by getting yourself hurt? Thats’ generally the consensus when people are doing things like refusing to eat, binging and purging or cutting themselves.
“Wouldn’t you agree there’s a better way to get through some mental issues other than by getting yourself hurt? ”
That depends, better for YOURSELF, yes, but not better for the rest of the world. Sometimes you need to forget about your own needs, even though our modern culture seems to have made it so that your own needs are supposed to be the most important thing in your life.
And if you already have so many problems that your life is going to be crap anyway, why not just focus on trying to make the world better instead ?
Probably not a “could have” at this point, since they were all about to die until Sal showed up. That said, Sal really didn’t need to bring along a passenger with no helmet….
I’m not worried about the bleeding: it looks superficial. I’m worried about the recent loss of consciousness, the weakness and dizziness, and what I suspect to be nausea.
Just so. And it is worth checking for skull fractures and intracranial bleeding. Mini neurological, CT scan, physical exam and x-ray of anything that shows up in that, overnight observation.
I feel like Amber would be to proud to even admit to herself that she’s injured and would probably try to drag herself from the scene rather than seek medical attention.
Wow… I like Sal even more now for that. Amber/Amazi-Girl will get someone else hurt at some point and needs to realize that. She should be in therapy not acting out vigilante fantasies.
I love Sal! And I love that she’s finally getting some love in the comments. (I know some of you have been with me from the start, but I mean more than the loyal few.)
No, she doesn’t “need” to realize that. That’s something JJJJJ Jameson would’ve said. People keep saying she put so many people at risk during the resuce, yet I fail to see how she could’ve handled that situation any better.
I mean, right off the bat one option Amazigirl has that Spider-Man doesn’t is to just leave this to the trained professionals. Because Ross isn’t flying around on a goblin glider and Amazigirl isn’t the only person with the Spider Powers needed to keep up with him, excepting of course other similarly untrained vigilantes.
Here, a less sexy example from the history of hispnic people (Mexicans in the particular, so not as ‘mine’ as it could be) of wht happened when we left the law in the hands of Self Help. You think it’s bad now? NOW it’s newsworthy. NOW it’s at least on paper a fucking travesty. Self Help is worse than the police.
Self Help is worse than the police if you aaren’t white. Self help is worse than the police if you’re trans. Self Help is worse than the police if you’re gay. The sole reason I can look at the police as worth saving *without looking outside* the USA (Which I also do) is that Self Help is worse than them, and our own history demonstrates this perfectly adequately. I will *NOT* fucking see us exalt the mob merely because our cops are still bastards. The mob was infinitely worse to us than the cops. None of this exonerates the cops – they are still racist bastards to a degree that should be unconscionable. But I will not see us give up protections merely because we’ve forgotten how much worse it got, and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.
What is the relevance of what you just wrote ?
Yes, mobs can do a lot of bad shit, but ORGANISED, OFFICIAL mobs can do a LOT WORSE.
And we were talking about vigilantes, not mobs, but I’ll give you that, SOME vigilantes are also bastards, so what ? ANYONE can be a bastard, being official doesn’t lessen that risk.
I have no idea why you are talking about “white people” though, one of the most active vigilantes today, Phoenix Jones, is definitively not white.
No, the empirical evidence *VERY* strongly indicates that the cops don’t kill sa many people as vigilantes used to. It’s far rarer now than it was, and I’m quite fucking aware of how common it is now, in spite of how many more people there are in the USA as a whole. Now, even if this is SOLELY because there are fewer cops now than there were vigilantes (A bold claim, and I’m not sure how the number of cops now compares to the size of the lynch mobs of yesteryear, and it’s probably not measurable because where would we get THAT data?)… THATS STILL PART OF THE POINT. Making them official keeps their numbers down, because the state will only put so many people on its payroll.
As far as White People, that’d be the stool. And do you really need me to explain the relevance? “Hey this is a bunch of people vigilantes killed from something fairly close to my own history, and in pretty recent memory. Vigilantes fucking suck too, and pretty esaily arguably MORE than the cops.” Do you just refuse to see that?
I mean, I don’t exactly get MAD at people who the system despises, and who won’t get any help from that system. If I found out about a hispanic vigilante, I get that, since humans have punishment-oriented lizard brains. But yer fuckin’ hurting us in the long run by making vigilantism look cool – that ends with us on a fucking pole, no matter what pretty suits you put on.
Lynch mobs are NOT vigilantes. Organised forces have ALWAYS committed more atrocious acts throughout history than ANY personal vigilantes ever have. That’s actually fact. And most of those lynch mobs you were talking about were often LEAD by that times version of the police, sheriffs organised them and “deputised” angry racists.
Concentration camps are a result of letting the “officials” do all the work. No public concentration of racists have managed to kill so many people as they did.
And I have no idea what this sentence means:
““Hey this is a bunch of people vigilantes killed from something fairly close to my own history, and in pretty recent memory. Vigilantes fucking suck too, and pretty esaily arguably MORE than the cops.” ”
I don’t mean the relevance, I mean what are you trying to say ?
And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race, so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”
Again, vigilantes are all races, always have been.
um, lol. Lynch mobs are EXPLICITLY Vigilantes (strictly speaking, it’s more accurate to say the mob is made up of vigilantes). They’re private citizens enacting violence to allegedly uphold community rules. That’s literally all a vigilante is.
“. And most of those lynch mobs you were talking about were often LEAD by that times version of the police, sheriffs organised them and “deputised” angry racists.”
Stop learning things from movies. Lynch mobs far more frequently had implicit, not explicit, police support.
“Organised forces have ALWAYS committed more atrocious acts throughout history than ANY personal vigilantes ever have.”
Only when their citizens are willing to do worse on their own. The state is an aggregate of power – of course everything big gets funnelled through it.
Also, I’m so happy white people are using a feeble grasp of history to argue their idiotic libertarian points! You think the murder of jews in europe started with the concentration of that power in the state? Maybe look at the events t hat lead to so many ‘goldmanns’ and ‘goldbergs’, and why so many came to the states. Spoiler alert: extrajudicial violence against Jews vastly preceded state violence against them, go fig. It’s like you don’t get aa state that racist without the public already being that racist – which, again, is why you’re better off leashing that public. Obviously you should leash the police too, but the police are FAR easier to run in a less terrible manner – granted, this is a point you have to actually look outside the USA for (and preferably, understand a god damned thing you see)
“And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race”
Um, sure, if you leave the US. Here in the USA, however…
[quote] so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”[/quote]
I’m sure you don’t.
Actually, maybe you reaally don’t. Maybe you haven’t fucking noticed, but you aren’t talking to the biggest fan of the police. They are a direct threat to my safety when I interact with them, and I go well out of my way to avoid them and immigracion despite being a legal citizen without a mark on her record besides traffic violations. Maybe you should fucking consider that there’s a god damned reason I’m defending the core concept, and saying they are still better for me than the mob. You’re trying to throw out concrete protections (From the mob, if literally only by making them believe they don’t need to engage in Self Help) because of some asinine point that you don’t understand. I will not have you use either my history, or someone else’s, which you don’t even get, to hurt me, or people like me. You clearly don’t care what happens, because you already knew the correct answer, then latched onto a sexy-sounding, shallow point from the news. Some of us don’t have the fucking luxury, because we raen’t fucking aaround with Other People’s Lives.
Though really, I’m wasting my time, because you are off in some fucking parallel earth ignoring everything that gets in the way of your precious pure ideology cinnamon buns.
You just keep ignoring that I am using the word MORE in “official forces has always committed MORE reciprocities against the public than any unofficial ones”
Those are facts you can look up, numbers, not opinions. And MORE doesn’t mean that civilians ALSO have done fucked up things, but NEVER to the extent that official forces has.
I’m not saying that police offers NO protection, but it’s a small percentage of them that actually offers ANY protection, and it just sounds a bit naive to believe they are better than civilians.
“And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race”
Um, sure, if you leave the US. Here in the USA, however…”
No, I was talking about the US actually. Again, Phoenix Jones seems to be the figurehead for superheroes in the USA and is not white.
“quote] so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”[/quote]
I’m sure you don’t.”
No, I don’t and you STILL haven’t explained it.
And how is getting MORE protectors throwing OUT something ?
” I will not have you use either my history, or someone else’s, which you don’t even get, to hurt me, or people like me.”
What do you mean, people like you ? I’m not trying to HURT anyone, not are the superheroes you are bashing, most of them are really peaceful even. And I don’t even know your history, I know OUR history though, the history of the world, which is what I was referring to.
“You clearly don’t care what happens, because you already knew the correct answer, then latched onto a sexy-sounding, shallow point from the news.”
What?! If I didn’t care, why am I trying to defend these superheroes ? They get enough guff as it is.
“I’m not saying that police offers NO protection, but it’s a small percentage of them that actually offers ANY protection, and it just sounds a bit naive to believe they are better than civilians.”
You are a fucking moron, raen’t you? I’m not saying the police re better people – I am saying that they prevent the mob from engaging in Self Help, not because they LIKE me, or because they ACTUALLY INTEND to protect me. I’m saying that the people most likely to be the mob? They believe the system works. Privileged people have a conception tht the system works, so even if they think I’m some terrible person who’s done criminal acts, they are content leaving it to the police to sort out. This is protection – it’s the lowest form of protection, but it’s a very real protection just the same. The police demonstrably require higher standards to really get going. Even if the police were EXACTLY as bad as the citizens who would engage in Self Help, there are fewer police than there are people inclined to Self Help on their own. Those people are held in check because they think the system works. The people whom it DOESN’T work for? I’m less apt to judge. But by encouraging Self Help (And the act of engaging in it already makes it sound like a better idea), they erode the protection I have from the mob – the protection that the system (allegedly) works, and can be trusted to deal with things. For those of us who would be murdered by their fellow citizens anyway, this is pretty useful – and it’s telling tht it’s people who /know/ the system is broken who are more likely to engage in murder of say, trans people for the crime of existing.
So you know, your unwillingness to understand this basic thing? That’s unfortunately my fucking problem. You privileged white kids always think that a broken system – a demonstraby broken, busted system – does nothing. Guess what: Because the bulk of your peers believe it’s useful, it protects me partially ANYWAY. The status quo means I fear the police. The mobs returning to SElf Help? Means I have to fear everyone who looks like they’re suspicious of me for any reason. And that’s a LOT of people. Oh, and I *STILL* fear the police. Good fucking job. ‘more protectors’ might be useful if they were actually protectors. Notice I haven’t positioned the cops as my protectors, because I am not as naive as you are.
“What do you mean, people like you ? I’m not trying to HURT anyone”
Your intentions != Your effects. Basic fucking lesson of the world.
“No, I was talking about the US actually. Again, Phoenix Jones seems to be the figurehead for superheroes in the USA and is not white.”
‘figurehead’ is not actually code for ‘statistically representative sample’, fyi
“And how is getting MORE protectors throwing OUT something ?”
Like I said, you don’t get it. You’re defining vigilante in the most helpful way to you (Pretty explicitly, given your mini post.). What a vigilante ACTUALLY IS, is an individual who takes up the burden of their own conception of law enforcement, and carries it out extrajudicially (And pretty inevitably, violently). It is BOTH a person who dresses in tights and thinks they’re helping people in need, and the constituents of a crazed mob (Provided the latter are upholding what they feel the law should do, or does do, which guess what…)
Your precious fake superheroes count (I remind you that their leader assaulted and harrassed anarchists over an unsubstantiated bomb threat), as do the Blackshirts or the KKK. If the word ‘vigilante’ only meant ‘people who did it to my satisfaction’, the word would be meaningless, because it wouldn’t describe anyone.
“What?! If I didn’t care, why am I trying to defend these superheroes ? They get enough guff as it is.”
You don’t care taht your precious ‘superheroes’ are worse for folks than the status quo, because they encourage Self Help (pretty explicitly, given that you are including political advocates for the same Self Help). I fucking hope your childish fantasies are worth the mental and physical health of actual people.
Minor correction: The KKK generally don’t engage in vigilantism anymore, preferring political activism in the name of their horribleness. I was referring to the organization historically.
Tragic backstories are such a nice ways to avoid responsibility for what you are doing.
This is the kind of tragic backstory Sal’s not interested in. And if she doesn’t have a backflash or something we might never learn why she tried her hand at robbery. I don’t think what we already know about her parents treatment accounts for that, as I said before, to me she looks absolutely desperate during the robbery.
She’d be to proud and see it as avoiding responsibility to tell.
Still works in this thread. I can picture Dorothy lecturing her newly zombified boyfriend: “Yes, you’re a zombie. No, that isn’t fair. But you have a choice now. You can be defined by what’s happened to you, and become a shambling, brain-munching parody of the person you were. Or you can human up and GO TO STUDY GROUP.”
I dunno, Sal has a point. There’s plenty of tragic backstories in the world, but very few of them are decent justification for putting on a mask and being a vigilante, or for knocking up a gas station with a knife.
100% are justification for some serious therapy, though
Sal frightened Amber. Amber stabbed Sal with a knife.
Amber need MOAH REVENGE!
It’s bullshit, even without the legal consequences that Sal bore and Amber escaped. Revenge is bullshit to begin with, and Amber has already had a generous share anyway. Amber’s raging demand for MOAH REVENGE is unhinged. It has no basis in justice. It makes Amber a danger to herself and others.
It’ll be interesting to see how the image in Amber’s mind of Sal as basically the root of all evil conflicts with the fact that she really did save her life. I feel like it’ll be too much for her already nearly shattered psyche.
I predicted that Sal would care and wouldn’t stay around to find out.
Some might find this admirable, I just find this cruel.
Though, to be honest, even if what Sal said is true, not giving Amber a chance to “Let it our”, to Talk about it, is only going to make matters worse. At least of this was a real world situation.
Keeping stuff bottled up inside for so long is the most unhealthiest thing you can do.
Generally when you’re at the ‘how dare you’ point, you’re not interested in meaningful dialogue. Honestly, given that Amazi-girl flat out attacked her basically unprovoked not too long ago, Sal’s been pretty nice to her.
It may be what would be the healthiest for Amber, but Sal is under no obligation to provide that for her.
It’s like Malaya with Sal. Amber here and Sal there opened with negativity after having previously antagonized the other and tried to act aggrieved when called out on their shit. But Malaya did not owe Sal a therapeutic and comforting narrative of friendship so as to protect her queer-platonic relationship with Marcie. And Sal here does not owe Amber the therapy she needs at her own mental expense of being needled by an antagonistic person who has no intention of thanking her for her aid and every intention of picking a fight.
It’s the worse outcome for Amber, but it is a bed she has made herself by not being ready to have an open dialogue with Sal and start to work through those triggers.
And that’s a thing. Sometimes you have to let things get worse until you can let go of the pride preventing you from being able to do the healthiest thing.
As far as Sal knows that’s the case, but the thing is your forgetting that Sal is the soul root of her trauma. Also talking about it is kind what she was about to do that till Sal just took off again, ya it would have been some sort of verbal assault but it’s still her unloading her issues in attempts to get closer.
And really can you really play the “Your issues are not my problem,” card when your actually the one caused them? Also just because she’s moved on from the past doesn’t mean it’s fair not to give the other person a chance to confrontalk their past when you at least owe her that much. She doesn’t haft to fight her but at least let have a confrontation of some kind so she can move on from her past.
Ya maybe on some ground she isn’t obligated but at least give her something if she wants to be the bigger pearson.
Sal doesn’t really owe her a darn thing. She has no idea who Amber is.
Both Sal and Amber were screwed up kids, whose paths crossed, that’s all.
Sal scared the crap out of her. And Amber stabbed her.
Who owes who an apology?
Sal is working thru her life issues trying to keep the anger at bay.
Amber is, and has, made no attempt to control her rage or talk to someone like Leslie her teacher about it.
Amber has no desire to ‘get closer’ to Sal, just the opposite.
Let’s be real, though. Sal is not the *sole* root of Amber’s trauma. Blaine is. Sal just helped create a crystal clear starting point for the degeneration of Amber into Amazi-Girl.
If Sal were the root of Amber’s problems, Ethan would be her side-kick right now.
That’s exactly it though, Sal DOESN’T KNOW anything about Amber. From her perspective, all Sal sees is a crazy masked vigilante who is angry and being rude for no discernible reason towards her even after Sal saves her life and tells her she did. In this situation a lot of people wouldn’t want to deal with it and would walk away instead of hearing out the other person.
Amber took it pretty badly to hear that “life saving” thing from Sal, but she will probably have to hear the same from Joyce and/or Becky. At this point, she won’t have any excuse to reject it like that.
the problem here with ‘no discernible reason’ is that there actually is a possible one, and given that Sal already brought it up and in general seems to be constantly low key aware of it… she has no reason to assume Amazi-girl isn’t just racist.
If you don’t know, then you have even less of an excuse to walk away before you learn. She was given an opportunity to know, and she refused it. Which fits with her behaviour though.
Yeah, it COULD’VE happened, in the sense that each proton in the constituent atoms that make up the earth could spontaneously and simultaneously cease to exist. Much more likely, Caped White Girl Power Trip would have continued to be an unbearable ass to her. You’re basically saying Sal was supposed to play an emotional lottery (You can’t win if you don’t play!) where the prize was of literally no value to her, because she doesn’t care about Amber, and she has no real incentive to do so, either solely based on the information she has, OR based on an omniscient perspective.
Amber isn’t just someone else, though. She’s someone who attacked Sal and her friends for drinking in a parking lot, then proceeded to do a whole bunch of crazy, dangerous shit that could have gotten everyone killed. She has all the proof she needs that Amazi-Girl is just some nutjob she doesn’t need to listen to.
Though to be fair, Sal also got into some physics-breaking herself with Joyce clinging to her back, so maybe she’s not one to talk.
ahahahaha no, nope nope nope, all of my nope, buddy.
Plenty of people will be complete jackasses, and if they start demonstrating this you fucking bail because your sanity is important to you. What you choose to bail on will ultimately say something about you, and that can be okay. I mean, consider what you’re saying: The emotional lottery is now, what, a GOOD idea because you might care about the prize? I likened it to a lotto for a reason – everyone cares about 10 million dollars, you’re still going to lose money on it.
“Plenty of people will be complete jackasses, and if they start demonstrating this you fucking bail because your sanity is important to you. ”
If your sanity is based on how other people act, you have deeper problems than what the other person can give you.
There is NEVER an excuse to not hear anyone out, even if they are completely rotten to the core and just want to abuse you, you still hear them out so that you can KNOW that they are like that. Otherwise you will just end up assuming.
You’re what, a robot, and not a particularly advanced one, to misinterpret that variant of sanity? Because people who have emotions should be able to trace that one out.
Also, lol aat the idea that people are 100% honest about everything, and lol at the idea that you owe the entire world your time. Nah. You should be prepared to be wrong, but as long as you’re willing to own tht possibility, fuck ’em. Also, if your super strict moral code requires people to subject themselves to abuse, reconsider your fucking priorities.
Owing people everything, all the time, is part of what makes us human. I am not aware of any other meaning of the word sanity ?
And it’s only abuse if you don’t want it.
Oh, okay, so I should WANT to be told I’m a spic, a slut, a freak. I should /welcome/ the wonderful dissent that comes when people talk about how I’m ruining families, upending God’s Law, and thta I’m literally as bad as Mao for my political beliefs. I’m /failing my obligations as a human being/ by not /wanting/ to be treated that way, and avoiding contact with people who are building to that same level of abuse as past experience has taught me.
Pretty fucking easily. And oh no, I won’t have absolute certainty people are total bastards when they enter ‘quack like a duck’ territory, OH NOES! ITS THE END OF THE WORLD, SOUND THE FUCKING ALARMS.
It’s more that no one owes anyone else being an emotional punching bag for their recovery. Even if it would “help” them. Same way that no one owes another person free education on an identity or aid when they are flailing. No one is obligated to take emotional harm just to help someone else.
And it’s hard to blame someone like Sal or Malaya, when Sal picked her fight against her, decides that they don’t need that shit right now when the other person is being antagonistic and hurtful.
And to be fair, I’m speaking from a perspective where I was expected to bottle up my humanity and be responsible for the emotional development of hostile adults because how I am had “done injury upon the family”.
I don’t find it admirable, but I don’t see where the “cruel” comes in. In Sal’s mind, Amazi-Girl just nearly got a whole lot of people hurt/killed, and it was only by the grace of luck that everyone is alive. And she did it to prove something of herself, not wholly of altruistic purposes. From her perspective, why should she “talk about it” with Amazi-Girl? She knows this girl is angry and self-destructive, but she’s seeing it from the end of the tunnel, where now what she sees is how many people could have gotten hurt because of what Amber needs to prove to herself.
And Amazi-Girl/Amber insulted her and condescended to her after Sal /saved her life/ during these actions. Walking away from this is pretty understandable.
Probably because Sal doesn’t give a shit about Amber and doesn’t even want to entertain the thought of having a conversation with a standoffish psycho jerk who is too prideful to even say “Thanks for saving my life”. I for one, have very little sympathy for her.
Amber/AG really has *no* idea that Sal saved her life. It would gall her, if it were true. (she probably thinks Sal dragged her off the side of the road) I don’t think she has thought thru the sequence of events, since she started getting the noggin-dots while on top of the car. Joyce will have the only eyewitness account.
Except it’s worse than that, because Sal straight up tells her she saved her and Amazi-girl’s last conscious memory was probably about to fall off a rope into a truck.
Amber is actively rejecting information that would lead her to changing her opinion about Sal and using her anger to hold fast to her dogma and beliefs about the world. And that’s a dangerous path to walk.
you ether die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Sal destroyed Amazi-girl thoroughly both in saving her and thus preventing the dying a hero part but she also told the truth that Amber is already well on the way toward acts of villainy out of shear blind hatred and a desire for revenge.
Sal is the hero of this story, the protagonist hair should have given that away from the beginning.
“Except it’s worse than that, because Sal straight up tells her she saved her”
Except that she didn’t, at all. The only thing she tells her is that she move her off the road, which could simply mean that Sal just happened upon her unconscious body lying next to the road and dragged her into the woods.
She might not even remember falling off the car, maybe even wondering if Sal was responsible for her black out.
This. She says it directly. That she had to save her ass. And Amber responds to it, because she gets indignant about it. And after Sal noted doing her a solid (and it was doing her a solid), that was when Amber pulled out her
oh, you’re a criminal, neener neener neener” line. Sal noting she’s done things to reach out has been responded to consistently with hostility and Amber going on the offensive.
Amber wants to hate Sal and she’s convinced herself she needs to hate Sal in order to hold on to her Amazi-girl alter. She’s still in a lot of ways blaming Sal for a large part of the damage her dad gave to her, which makes sense.
Knowing what I do about abusive parents, it’s really hard to sustain recognizing an abusive parent as the toxic presence they are, so she might view hating and blaming Sal as a bulwark of her emotional separation from her dad. Like, if she recognizes that Sal isn’t a monster, then she might stop viewing her dad as a monster and that would be legitimately, literally dangerous for her as her dad is an emotionally manipulative, physically abusive shitlord.
The problem comes in where Sal is not her dad. Sal was just some kid with a knife who has grown up to be a loner who wants to keep mostly to herself much like Amber.
Still, all she knows that Sal did for her was pull her away, so she would think that referred to “Not getting in trouble with the cops”, which could be even more infuriating to Amazi-Girl, since she might feel that Sal is grouping her in with the very same crowd she believes to be above.
“I’m Amazi-Girl! I don’t need to rescued from the LAW, I AM the law!”
At least in a concussed and confused state of mind.
Sal’s not Amazigirl’s therapist. It’s not her job to stick around and listen to Amazigirl’s tragic backstory. Amazigirl’s been actively hostile to Sal, giving Sal little reason to want to do any of that.
If Amazigirl wants to talk it out she can go to a friend or pay a professional, but she doesn’t get to just enlist random passersby into her therapy sessions. It’s not “cruel” that Sal didn’t offer up free labor to a stranger after already having dragged her unconscious body off the road and stuck around long enough to make sure she woke up.
And what’s more, she’s not fit to be Amber’s therapist. It takes knowledge and skill. If Sal decided to take on Amber’s treatment that would be dangerous and irresponsible.
The most so because (though this is not apparent to Sal) Amber seems to have or be developing dissociative identity disorder, a very serious mental illness that requires specialist treatment.
And this is pretty much exactly how I expected Sal, as someone who has (mostly) come around to healthy adulthood to act vs Amber who…
Amber needs help. Professional help. A lot of it. Not saying Sal doesn’t as well, because she probably could benefit, but Amber is just such a clusterfuck at this point in her life. She could have been fucking killed. And she didn’t seem to even think about that. Her self-destructive behavior is so scary to watch.
“She could have been fucking killed. And she didn’t seem to even think about that.”
I think she does. And it’s part of the job. Do you think every cop, fireman, ambulance driver, etc., stop to think “Oh, no, my job could get me killed, I should stop then” ?
No, because they are generally *adults with professional equipment and training*, not idiot teenagers needing to prove something to act against the abuse their father heaped on them.
(Which, yes, IS a large part of Amber’s motivation. Remember the echo when chasing Toedad: “Just some.. stupid punk.. with a gun…”))
I mean, If I saw a non-paramedic go “OH NO THAT PERSON NEEDS A TRACHEOTOMY” and try to *perform* one, fuck yes I would try to stop them, they probably have no freaking clue what they’re doing.
In this case it definitely does. Amazigirl has no training to deal with hostage situations or vehicular pursuits or really any of this.
I would bet good money that literally no Indiana police officer would have rode a skateboard while hanging on to the car with a grappling hook.
Police officers have protocols in car chases so that it doesn’t turn into a collision like that. Certainly they don’t fight the driver on top of the roof while throwing caltrops to send the already driverless vehicle out of control. I’m not saying “A good cop wouldn’t do it that way”. I would defy you to find a single local police officer that has ever pulled a stunt like that.
No, but they would’ve responded in other ways, which could’ve ended up just as fatal as this didn’t!
They would probably also have used caltrops, or spikes, put up a roadblock, and, importantly, brought guns to a man-with-a-gun, resulting in a gun fight which is inherently more dangerous than rooftop stunts.
I’m not saying it would DEFINITIVELY been worse, but it could’ve been. And I don’t see that the chances were any better had they gone the official route.
First off, police have maneuvers that they’re taught to try and bring a car to a stop safely like the pit maneuver. Second, we’ve identified Ross’s gun as a single shot rifle. He’d have exactly one chance to fire it off before getting gunned down in a firefight. Sure he might decide to try and use that one shot on Becky but it would be hard to fire a long gun inside a car and Becky would fight back if she saw the police and think that she might have a chance to make it out of the situation alive.
It’s only through sheer luck that this didn’t turn out fatal. Amber could’ve gotten more hurt when she got thrown off the car and hit the other car’s windshield. She could instead have hit the ground in front of the other car and got run over. Then she endangers the life of that other motorist by getting her involved in the chase. A chase that requires the motorist to speed up with both a cracked windshield and AG hanging from the hood of the car both obscuring the motorist’s vision. Then even when AG jumped onto the roof of Ross’ car, how much can she really do? She had caltrops to blow out the tires but then how was she going to deal with an irrational gun-wielding man? This ain’t a comic book where the superhero harmlessly busts through the door window and pulls the driver out of the car one-handed. Instead what happens is that AG gets thrown off the car and WOULD have been hit by the oncoming semi if not for Sal showing up to save her ass.
It’s not her job. It’s her outlet. She has zero formal training and the shit she just pulled was way over the “suicidal” point on the reckless scale. She could not only have gotten herself killed, but also the driver of the car, the semi-truck driver, Becky and her father, and Sal and Joyce.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Sal was right. This was such a fucking stupid move on Amber’s part.
Amber has been dealing with childhood abuse, PTSD, and an anxiety disorder for years by channeling it either into isolation, or self-harm/self-destruction (Amazi-Girl). She has never seemed to learn actual coping techniques for her anger and her other issues. She doesn’t just want Sal to be a by-the-book villain, she absolutely /needs/ her to be, and when Sal won’t play ball, and instead points out what Amber is doing wrong and why she (Sal) does not have time for this shit, Amber is cracking apart, because this is not fitting her internal narrative and her view of right/wrong.
I’ll probably be proven wrong, but it looks like she’s about to have an anxiety attack as the adrenaline wears down and she breaks apart.
Eh. More like a concussion, if we’re going to assume she doesn’t go to a hospital. A black out of an extended period of time after this sort of injury would imply brain damage in need of professional help.
Mmm… Sal has a good point, but at the same time I disagree with her because there is still a matter of scale. She wanted to prove herself because of racist microaggressions which she experienced in response to having more black features when compared to her “Whiter” and brother – who simply hasn’t had to work as hard for anything. I am not trying to dismiss the complex this would bring, but Amber is a product of direct physical and psychological abuse. Amazigirl is the manifestation of years of being told she is weak and worthless. She had to watch her mother get beaten by her father, and then watched her best friend be threatened with a knife only to be admonished by the very person who was beating her mom. That leaves deep psychological scars.
Sal has become kind of a target for Amber’s aggression, in no small part because of her own actions, but what formed Amazigirl is more complex than that. It can’t just be boiled down to, ‘She wants to prove herself.’
And Ethan to some extent. How much he really knows is unclear. There’s also the question of what, if anything, Mike knows, but Mike would probably be most helpful by not trying to help at all.
Even more, she specifically said she doesn’t care about the sob story. It was just poignant sounding one liner as she motorcycled off into the sunset. Sal’s not gonna spend her evening dissecting how accurate her words were to Amazigirl’s situation and neither should you.
Even moreso because of the context. Keep in mind, Amazigirl has no idea what was driving Sal years ago, and Sal knows this. She’s giving a cryptic allusion to the criminal past she just mentioned without actually communicating anything of substance to Amazigirl.
Yeah, I know. I was more commenting in relation to people who were like, ‘Oh Sal told her off! She is so right!’
Well, no. She isn’t. Because she was a direct contributor to Amber’s trauma. And her experiences were different. She already suffered from anxiety, and adding onto that abuse and feeling like she had failed her best friend compounded that issue. It’s worlds away from what Sal had experienced.
And I think that Sal would care, if she knew what Amber had experienced because of her. If nothing else, Sal understands grudges, and it’s make Amazigirl’s treatment of her less arbitrary.
No offense, but having a shitty life doesn’t outright make being wreckless and self-destructive A-ok. They were somewhat driven by similar things, even if it is on a larger scale. It’s like…say I was in a car accident that paralyzed my siblings. I’d grow up thinking cars need to be built safer. Now say there’s another guy who’s parents were both run down by cars. Now both of us have experienced similar car trauma, but if one of us starts slashing tires and key scratching cars wherever they go, While it’s “Understandable” it’s not “condoned” If Amber’s doing the same shit Sal did that got her sent to a boarding school, we can’t just act like it’s better because she’s been through more shit than Sal. It’s understandable, not Justified.
Okay, no, you are straight up wrong here. Reaction to trauma differs wildly. It wouldn’t make any smidgen of sense to compare the two situations unless you were talking about the same person being in both of them, and even then that smidgen would be very small and shitty. Let’s not play trauma olympics here, mmm’kay?
Try to find reasons to act high and mighty all you want, but treating all trauma as the same is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of writing a story, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of literary analysis, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of psychology, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of basic empathy, it is RIDICULOUSLY STUPID.
For the record, since you want to get into a measuring contest here, I am not comparing REACTIONS to trauma. I am comparing the SCALE of trauma and whether Sal’s commentary is accurate, because it comes off as insightful, but fails to hold up under scrutiny. Somehow you have taken that to mean that I am saying Sal is less justified in her anger and rebellion because her trauma wasn’t as severe or direct, and I said no such thing. I never said Sal doesn’t have her demons. Or that her demons aren’t serious. I just said that the statement that Amazigirl is fueled by the same demons as Sal is wrong.
And, for the record, invalidating someone’s experiences by saying that people have it worse is a shitty thing to do, but it’s no better to paint all trauma with a wide brush and claim that no one can acknowledge that some forms of abuse and trauma are more direct and serious. Especially when one party is trying to lecture the other!
Triage exists for a REASON, even in psychology. Because different forms of trauma leave different scars, and it’s vitally important to understand how complex and serious underlying motivations are so that people can be understood and treated. Because two events don’t lead to the same motivation. Don’t leave the same damage. And it’s not invalidating one person to say another has had different experiences, to which they were a part of, and they are reacting to those experiences in a different way.
Stabbing Sal with a knife wasn’t cathartic. Beating piss and pickhandles out of Blaine wasn’t cathartic. Knuckling Sal and kicking her ribs in isn’t going to be cathartic either. Catharsis is pre-scientific bullshit not supported by evidence.
I don’t think Sal really has made peace with her demons. Her behavior, her refusal to make friends other than, sorry I can’t remember her name for some reason, shows antisocial tendencies.
Sal is still as self destructive as anyone, though in a more low keyed way. She only thinks herself better. Makes her arrogant.
Peace can also be an uneasy truce. She became a loner to avoid emotional entanglements, her parents failed to meet her emotional needs and that ended badly. Time at a reform school reinforced the lesson that trusting others is a bad idea. Arrogance and self-confidence are closely tied. She’s learned to rely on herself. As for self destructive, her only self destructive trait seems to be her smoking habit. No drugs, no drinking (or very little, I could have missed seeing her with an occasional beer). She’s adamant about her grades, and seems to want a real future. It’s also interesting that her one confidant is a girl who’s cut off from much of society by the inability to speak. Her story, and their relationship, is intriguing.
What exactly is Sal threatening to do? Murder Amber? That seems really unlikely for her character.
Beat her savagely? That seems more likely, but still not really conductive to Amber laying off her vigilante persona and Sal is smart enough to realize that.
So is the threat “if you keep doing this, I will do something bad”? I dunno “end you” seems so vague (but maybe that’s the idea)
I’m guessing Sal will tell Joyce about AG being behind the trees, and that she can see to her when the cops are gone, or something. I’m still wondering if Maggie-red-car will look for her, out of curiosity, and end up helping her.
Not sure if this is a Bullseye or just Close Enough to Count, but hopefully it’ll prompt Amber to try a healthier way to deal with things, and seek whatever help she needs to get on that path, either way.
fucking TOLD, oh man. Sal, i love ya. Amazing how amber in panel three is literally like “how DARE you save me from ending up a bloody smear on the front of a truck! How dare you!!”
I was just remembering the comic where Amber tells Ethan that Sal is at the same uni and Ethan basically tells her to let it go, that they have changed. That along with this strip sort of makes me feel angry at Amber for holding Sal responsible. My guess is that if the Sal thing hadn’t happened, there would’ve been another event that would trigger Amber’s response.
It’ll be really interesting what happens from now with these two characters.
I’m thinking Sal’s backstory is more than just her being a bored middle class girl who had to deal with racism and not measuring up to her parent’s expectations.
I’m excited to find out more.
Sal robbed a grocery store with a knife when she was 13. Ethan had taken Amber to that same store and was encouraging her to be self sufficient going out.
Then the robbery took place. When Ambers father came to get her, he ridiculed her for acting so afraid of a ‘a punk kid with a knife’.
Amber went ballistic and raced to the car where Sal was in handcuffs. She grabbed the knife (somehow) and drove it thru Sal’s hand. Which is why Sal always wears gloves now.
Sal was shipped off to a ‘private school/reformatory’ until she graduated.
It is more than not living up to her parents expectations. Her mother literally can’t see her if Walky is in the room. Her father is ‘gently disapproving’.
I meant WHY.
I read the comic- I’m aware of her past. But people don’t just do things to do them. Sal has had this bored facade with the occasional blow throughout this whole comic. Yes we’ve seen her rob a store. yes we’re given the notion that she can handle herself and then some.
Yes what you listed how she feels now and the aftermath of what’s she’s done- but pretty much nothing on before the act.
So why is the question.
We know Amber’s drive and reasons.
What about sal?
How did she get to the point of robbing a store and getting shipped off to boarding school.
She couldn’t have needed the money.
I doubt she did it because she was a bored middle class girl- though with as little as we’re given it’s easy to jump to that conclusion [not that I’ve ever really believed it but it’s an easy conclusion to jump to].
So why?
That’s what I’m excited to find out
We do know more than “bored middleclass girl”. Idon’tcarenomore already said it very well: “Her mother literally can’t see her if Walky is in the room. Her father is ‘gently disapproving’.”
That shit is deeply damaging. Being constantly told that you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy enough, is not healthy. Even Walky agrees that their parents are overbearing. We hear that their mother has already decided on Walky’s future (not telecommunications, but premed). Someone who decides for her kids in that way, what will she do with the kid she has decided never measured up? Today, she ignores Sal. But I do wonder how she acted when she still saw a chance to mold Sal into something worthwhile. In front of strangers, she was judgmental and insistent on good manners. What did she say to Sal in private?
I have very little sympathy for Mrs Walkerton. Hers is an insidious, almost invisible kind of abuse, and its victims do indeed often get written off as “bored middleclass kids” because hey, it’s not like your parents beat you or anything. No, they just made their love contingent on achievements and behaviors that you were just not able to deliver. But who needs parental love, anyway?
(I assume there was an earlier robbery where she was successfull in escaping at the very least, and probably didn’t end up as a standoff with her holding a hostage with a knife)
Her dad enrolled her in self defense classes after the incident with Sal instead of getting her some therapy. Learning some other form of martial art isn’t gonna help anything. What she needs is therapy.
During “Up All Night to Get Vengeance”, why didn’t Amber just say to Sal, “Hey, you threatened my friend and I years ago with a knife! Not cool!”?
She presumed that her identity would be revealed in the newspaper the next day, so it’s not like she needed to keep anything secret.
I mean, there’s making dumb college mistakes, and then there’s not pressing the proverbial Easy Button when it’s staring you in the face for five minutes.
I just feel like making a reveal like that is something one would be itching to do in that situation, just to see the reaction on the “villain”‘s face.
What ‘reveal’? Sal already knows that she robbed convenience stores with a knife when she was thirteen, and that some terrified kid cowered during he last robbery and then knifed her after she was arrested. The Big Reveal is going to be a very dull surprise.
“Oh. That was you, was it?” What else ya gonna say?
And she doesn’t know Amber O’Malley. She knows that the girl who stabbed her is out there somewhere. Does it matter to her who it is?
“That kid who got frightened in your last robbery and who stabbed you after you were arrest! That was ME!” “Oh really? I knew it had to be someone. You, huh? Fancy that!”
Amber blaming Sal for anything significant is bullshit. Sal frightened Amber without even realising she was present. Amber took her revenge by knifing Sal while she was defenceless. Then she tried to get more revenge by beating Sal up in a parking lot. And now she is violently angry that Sal saved her life at risk of death, injury, and legal consequences. And she wants more revenge. That is way, way out of proportion to anything that Sal did. Sal didn’t gun Amber’s parents down in front of her eyes. She just frightened her. Inadvertently. Amber stabbing Sal was already a grossly excessive and unnecessary reaction.
We’re all sympathetic to Amber because we sympathise about the shitty life her shithead father gave her, and we identify with smart kids in dull classes, and we think she looks hot in the yellow dungarees. But when she blames anything significant on Sal she’s way off the beam.
And what reaction do you think that would have? Do you think Sal’s going to break down in tears and apologise to the girl she didn’t even look at during the robbery who then stabbed her after she’d been arrested and restrained?
TELL IT LIKE IT IS, SAL!
I feel for Amber. I really do. But she needs to get some help before she gets herself or somebody else killed. Amazigirl is NOT a healthy coping mechanism, even if she does get to wear a rad costume and run around on roofs.
I wonder if the “shoulds” make it easier for Amber to commit amazing stunts, but also make it really hard to take the easier course of action. And by that, I mean, her dad slammed her with lots of “shoulds” growing up. How a person should act. How her meekness was bad. How she wasn’t strong enough. How she should have done this to prevent something bad or disappointing him.
An impossible standard of perfection.
And now, she’s escaped him, but is still haunted by those expectations of perfection, now mixing with her DID and self-loathing to produce where Amazi-girl is going these days. Someone who can’t fail. Not just, who doesn’t want to fail, but feels it would be a failure to herself to not succeed in her goal and to complete that goal flawlessly.
And so, she throws herself into danger but does so without a net and if she gets injured or killed, who cares because she’s succeeded. She does better in the stunts, because she’s not afraid of fucking up, and puts her all in. But she opens herself for deeper physical and emotional pain on an already weathered psyche.
Sal might be right, but would her intervention be successful? What was her plan other than riding off to intercept? How effective would that be? And the only thing different about Sal is she’s not robbing convenience stores for attention anymore. She’s still pointlessly rebelling against everything.
Amber was going to reveal the dramatic origin of how Sal killed her parents in an alley! However, Sal basically said, “Yeah, I don’t care why you hate me. You really need to get some therapy.” In an university of people who indulge her comic book fantasy, Sal completely ignores it and refuses to play by the genre.
Well, she can’t run for 17 years. I imagine that by the time she gets to Harvard Law, she’ll be unenamored with vigilantism. Keep in mind, at most she’s in the middle of one survey course, and she’s still a kid, if a smart one. The ways in which Self Help has gone wrong are not going to have been a focus of her courses, nd the rule of law is not something THAT solidly enshrined in the USA to start with (There /are/ reasons we are more in love with superhero comics and stories than most).
I bet if you asked Dorothy about the state’s powers, she could tell you why this shit was wrong, she just hasn’t really critically thought about a vigilante yet. All of the Dumbs make mistakes, because, well, everyone does. What matters is what comes next.
No argument. I believed the most extraordinary things when I was that age.
I was making a little joke about how the operation of webcomic time has pushed Dottie’s run back. There was a time when I thought she’d be eligible for the 2028 race and plausible by 2044. Now it seems like she can’t possibly run until 2032 and doesn’t have a hope until 2036.
Meanwhile, I’ll more likely than not be dead by 2025, when Dotty is still a freshman.
Amazi-Girl is awesome and wonderful to everyone but Sal, who finds her a petty bully. Mostly because Amber is a petty bully to Sal since Sal refuses to be evil.
Sigh… It stinks when your arch-nemesis saves your arse. It stinks even worse when they don’t even know they’re supposed to be your arch nemesis. It REALLY stinks when they’re reasonable to you. It TOTALLY reeks when they compare you to them.
Goddamn, I just really love Sal a lot. The ‘reformed rebel’ (but at their heart still totally a rebel, but now channelling their rebel nature into doing good) is one of my favorite character types. Plus she has that badass motorcycle. Which helps
That sums up Amber more than anything else. Save the girl in trouble? Stop somethign evil from happening? No, it’s “I can’t fail them! I can’t be the one to fail! Me!” me! HOW DARE THIS EVIL PERSON HELP OUT I HATE YOU!”
And will be driven to murder herself when Sal continues to not recognize her, despite how many “You made me this way” hints she drops (while never actually just telling Sal where she knows her from).
And despite noting that Amber is on a bad path, I know intimately how easy it is to get on that path. To dump a lot of pressure on an alter to fix everything and be perfect “or else badness”. To treat an alter like a toxic dumping ground for negative emotions. To feed your self-destructive tendencies, but view it as helping those around you. And to think of anger as some kind of infection.
I don’t know if Amber will have some of the realizations I did way back when, but I suspect it will take much more than this to really get her analyzing things and working for her best mental health (and it doesn’t mean she necessarily needs to hang up the superheroine boots for good).
tbqh, if we want to taalk needs or shoulds from a remotely realistic point of view, she could be the picture of mental health and she would STILL need to hang the damn things up.
Trying to shut down what an alter sees as a core part of itself or trying to eliminate its presence is a good way to create a fully disassociated alter, one with trust issues surrounding integration. It’s why the old method of treating DID was so counter-productive. Amber may need the boots for her own health, but there’s ways to do it that aren’t going to feed these bad roads and self-destructive tendencies. (Using it for kink like she does with Danny is actually not a bad method honestly, though she probably doesn’t want to try and force the Amber personality to be celibate).
Honestly, what she needs most these days is to get the alters talking and stop viewing them as needing separate emotional realities and clothing-triggered separations of self.
Yeaaaaaahhhh I kinda put therapy beneath ‘not getting me and people like me murdered’ on the hierarchy of needs. Even if Amber weren’t picking shitty targets, she encourages others to take things into their own hands. That ends worse than cops do; Zimmerman’s extended history of harrassing black people culminating in murder is an example of Self Help that got on the national news. I really don’t care that she needs it to get better. I really, truly, don’t. Even if Amber were doing everything right (And she isn’t, even where Sal OR Blaine isn’t involved), she encourages Self Help.
While Sal got the last word here, and rightly is the voice of reason over the reckless crazy lady in a costume, I still feel she’s getting off too easy for some reason. Odd.
Correction. I just realized the reason it seems off. It makes it seems like Sal has had her big important epiphany but it all happened ‘off screen’ it feels ‘unearned’ I guess.
None of which we saw. Hence her moral high ground feeling undeserved. Whether it is or is not is another question entirely but how a story is told is as important as what the story is telling.
Personally Sals attitude really grinds my gears, she really thinks she knows everything and her word is law
I’d love to see AG (when healed up) give Sal a richly deserved ass whooping as it may just take Sals attitude of “I’m a big bad ass and I can take anyone down” down a notch or two
We’ve seen AG take on and beat down bigger, stronger opponents and all we’ve seen Sal do is take down Malaya
Ah, hummm.
Sal is horrible yup, she saved Ambers ass, then got her away from the road so she wouldn’t be outted to the cops and possible face charges for what she did.
Sal woke her up and got her talking to see if she was okay.
For this, Amber screams at her.
Actually, Sal is right. She does know everything here that she needs to know. She knows Amber is acting out of rage, same as she did at one time. Sal is still working thru it, and is smart enough to know that she can’t tell Amber a damn thing -Amber doesn’t want to hear anything right now.
That’s what Sal did wrong, though. She should have just left Amber to be picked up by the cops. It would have prevented whatever tragedy she’s inevitably going to cause.
Sals calling out AG for what potentially could have happened but, potentially, Sal could have caused almost as big a accident by her extremely reckless driving
Potentially bad things could have happened to Becky but what did happen is AG stopped Ross and who exactly is Sal to tell everyone how to act? She went to a catholic boarding school, can’t handle her alcohol and is a thoroughly unpleasant person so before she starts doling out advice and threats she should take a big, long look in the mirror and sort that person out first
The only reason she had to drive recklessly was to prevent the tragedy that AG almost caused.
AG stopped Ross, but in a really dangerous fashion, and unnecessarily—if she hadn’t been there, know what would have happened? The cops would have stopped Ross. He fired a gun on a campus; they’re not just going to let that go, and Joyce could have given them all the information they needed to know and more about who he was, where he was going, and why he was doing it.
Maybe it would have taken until the next day or two, but the cops would have handled it.
Almost but didn’t cause a tragedy like Sal almost but didn’t cause a tragedy. The cops might have stopped Ross or the cops might have opened fire on Ross or the cops might not have found Ross because Ross might not have gone home or on being surrounded by the cops Ross might have shot Becky we simply don’t know what might have happened so maybe the cops might have handled it but maybe the cops wouldn’t have
Sal is a child herself yet she calls others kid why? Because she rides a motorbike and smokes? Well she must be so mature then which she shows by telling someone all about themselves but refusing to listen when the person in question wants to explain
Okay, listen – there is ‘could have caused an accident’ and then there is ‘actually already literally caused an accident that only didn’t result in horrible tragedy due to a) Sal and b) a lot of dumb luck’. Have you missed the overturned car (and the /gag/ of Becky being miraculously unharmed)? Have you missed the truck? Have you missed Sal catching her in midair?
There is nothing ‘potential’ about this situation.
The ONLY reason this is only a “potential” danger if they had called the cops, is because they DIDN’T.
It was ONLY bad luck that escalated the situation, if she hadn’t been spotted in the mirror, if Ross hadn’t tried to kill her, etc.
Yet, this is the only course of action we have right now.
The potential for catastrophe was even larger if Amazi-Girl hadn’t intervened, and it scares me a bit that so many here can’t see that.
Both of those things were inevitable? She was hitched on a skateboard to the back of his car. Drivers look into the rearview mirrors as a regular part of driving and she was way visible and out of place back there.
He was going to try to kill her. That’s why he had the gun.
It’s not “Bad Luck” to be seen when you’re plainly visible somewhere he absolutely has to look. It’s not “Bad Luck” for the gunman to try and kill you when you try to stop him.
Sal wasn’t wakeboarding behind a car, jumping from car to car, throwing tacks around on a highway, or messing with dangerously unstable guys with guns. Sal wouldn’t have done anything *at all* if Amber hadn’t basically forced the issue—if Sal hadn’t done what she did, there would have been unsightly splatter marks all over the highway, causing a real PITA for the city’s sanitation department. What Amber did, OTOH, in real life would have at the least caused severe injuries and/or deaths, and at the worst a giant pile up causing injuries to other drivers on the road who had nothing to do with the whole ordeal.
Remember what I said about Joyce being a witness? She knows where Ross lives. So Ross can go right on home and the cops can catch up to him at their leisure. He *would* have been caught, no question. Anyway, however you look at it, if I have to choose between the cops and an insane 18-year-old, I think I’d rather trust the cops. What Amber did would *never* have worked the way it did in real life. I also think it’s pretty unlikely Ross would have shot Becky—that would have put a crimp in his plan to straight-ize her. Other people that stood in his way, like Dina or Amber, were much more at risk of that.
Sal isn’t the most mature person around, no. However, *in this situation*, Amber is making Joyce look mature. She’s basically on a whole other planet.
Oh, and to expand a bit on the “Ross might have shot Becky” thing—Becky had managed to talk down Ross’s gun-crazy. Who turned it back on? Amber. Plenty of ways *that* could have gone wrong. Nice job!
Er, hello? Making noises about killing anyone who might try to take her back? If the cops caught him, his life at the very least was forfeit – not that I have any issues with that, but he might have taken people with him. Besides, he might have dropped off Rebecca with the reprogrammers by then.
I was about to commend Sal’s wisdom, but the commenters reminded me that Amazi-girl had actually tried to tell her about their connection a while ago. And Sal just disregarded it, and continues to disregard it, even as she involves herself in the situation.
This is the same avoiding-other-people pattern as when earlier today she blew off the advice to make other friends. Sal pointedly avoids human contact, and while in this situation she’s in the right by a landslide, in general, she could have handled this even better – and she really hasn’t gotten over all her demons.
Strangely enough I like Sal. What I am not too fond of is all this dumping on Amazi-Girl for having the guts to stop something bad from happening. Bad things happen all the time and people complain about no one doing anything. Well Amazi-Girl did something and now Sal gets a chorus of people to back her up because some of the tactics she used were reckless. And what was Sal’s plan? Could she have rescued Becky? Would she have rescued Becky if Joyce had not demanded it?
I’m similar in that I think Sal has really good points and perspective here and that Amazi-girl does deserve props for lucking into probably the only option that led to no one getting shot (and you’re right on what was Sal’s plan. At best they would have just followed him to his home and confronted him there for Round 2 of hostage theatre or risked some bigger problem on the road through dangerous driving.) And Sal is right that Amazi-girl’s plan relied on a lot of luck to not kill anyone. I mean, tacks on a highway?
Amazi-girl definitely deserves credit for saving the day. It’s the way she’s done it that signals more a bad road for Amazi-girl with regards to her self-destructive tendencies and how she’s working against her own mental health.
It’s a whole mess honestly. And yeah, it’s kind of awkward seeing the few comments that are more along the lines of “Amber is crazy, why is she even allowed to do things” when I share the same mental illness as her.
I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that you probably don’t deal with the mental illness by being a vigilante and trying all kinds of impossible James Bond stunts that are likely to turn a hostage situation into a dead hostage—and dead you—situation, so I wouldn’t take the parallel too seriously.
It’s not just that she has a mental illness. It’s that she deals with it in such an incredibly bad way.
She is a bit hypocritical. Also it would be awesome if someone like Joyce or Dina took out Sal (anyone generally perceived as weak) so that Sal will finally realize that smoking and owning a motorcycle doesn’t make you tough. It makes you addicted to tabbaco and gives you helmet hair. I do feel that Joyce will eventually leave both Sal and Amber behind, because she’s willing to grow while they won’t.
I hope AG can get over herself and actually -hear- everything Sal just said. Please make it so.
Aaand I didn’t think I could love Sal any more than I already do, but there it is. XD Well, I’m not too sure about the “I will end you” threat, but other than that.
Well we are less than 24 hours from finding out who was in the ambulance in the preview. I think ToeJam is a prime candidate, but we could also have AG or Dina, whom we haven’t seen since some time in October RL time.
I bet the dizziness along with Sal’s propensity to spout supervillain lines (“Ah will end you” is right out of a comic book) will not heighten the perceived superhero-nemesis Amber has projected onto herself and Sal. Not at all.
Anyway, even if the delivery was more campy and threatening that I would like, I’m glad someone is telling Amber to stop.
It’s pointless though, cause Amazi-Girl is immune to criticism.
You’re spot on. “If your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.” Just one of many fantastic one-liners from that amazing show (may it RIP).
Here’s a thing about Sal. She’s not *entirely* wrong… But, she is significantly wrong.
It does matter what’s fueling Amazi-girl, and effectively just saying “get over it” isn’t going to help.
And, to an extent, a very real extent, this animosity Amazi-girl has for Sal is Sal’s fault. Sal did what she did, this is a consequence. Now, Sal doesn’t know that. She might not know if she ever saw Amber without the mask. But, here’s the thing, Sal, actions have consequences that don’t go away just because you’re done being bad.
Sal, if you think that people can just “let go” of the things that hurt them, take off your other glove, look at that hand. Any scar from being stabbed there must be completely gone, because you’ve “let it go”, yes?
If not, these “drop truth and walk away” moves… they’re not dropping truth and walking away. They’re saying what makes you feel superior then getting out before anybody can point out you’re wrong.
Sal, you need to find out… and you need to apologize. And, yes, you need to understand that Amber still might not forgive you and that will be her right. Sometimes, you just don’t get to be in control of things.
What’s fuelling Amazi-Girl is years of unrelenting abuse of Amber by her father. Sal’s contribution was trivial.
And dressing up as Amazi-Girl to vent her anger isn’t working. She beat fuck out of Blaine and has only got worse since. A violent confrontation with Sal is not going to work any better.
The irony here is that Sal just got done doing pretty much the same thing that Amazi-Girl did. They were both trying to rescue someone who was in danger, and they both did so in a way that, if things had gone badly, would have resulted in multiple deaths.
I don’t see Sal as having any room to talk here. It’s pretty clear that while she might not be actively committing crimes now, she’s still got a whole heap of her own problems to deal with before she starts telling other people off about theirs.
There is that. They are very similar in their behavior and outlooks. The thing that separates them is that Sal is a little more recovered and so does her best to avoid those death-defying high-stakes stunts when possible, whereas Amber still views those as necessary to life.
Which is probably why Sal is talking a little to herself as she talks to Amber here. After all, she knows from experience exactly what Amber is doing and if not why, then certainly with what combination of self-destruction and anger and desire to help no matter what.
“does her best to avoid those death-defying high-stakes stunts when possible”
*Leaps six feet into the air on her motorcycle in front of a speeding truck to catch Amber with one arm and then make an impossible landing while Joyce is with her*
Why should Sal apologize to Amber? Her actions were but a catalyst, not the cause of Amber’s trauma. That would be the years of abuse provided by her father.
Furthermore, Sal was already detained and under custody when Amber stabbed her. She attacked someone who was not a threat anymore.
Also, the apology, if it were accurate to what actually happened, would be something like “I’m sorry I frightened you during that robbery; I didn’t even know you were there.” I don’t think that Amber would find it satisfactory.
Mind you, I don’t think think that Amber would find any possible apology satisfactory, because she doesn’t want an apology. She wants more revenge. Stabbing Sal wasn’t enough. Knocking her to the kerb and stomping her to death wouldn’t be enough either. She’s going to rage, and rage, and rage, and never stop.
Amber is mentally ill. She is a danger to herself and others. She needs to be treated, and circumstances are sufficient to justify involuntary committal.
It is not Sal’s job to go out, find the people involved in the robbery, and apologize to them. As AA, which is big on people making amends for their wrongs, pointed out, contacting someone out of the blue whom you harmed greatly might harm them more.
She still doesn’t have a clue Amber and Ethan were her victims then.
To Amber/Amazi-Girl the robbery seems to be the main source of her vigilantism – it’s THE symbol for her helplessness and inability to protect herself and the people loves. Maybe, because everybody agreed what happened there was wrong, whereas deep inside Blaine’s poison still tells her, that he never did anything wrong?
I don’t think Amber has the guts and good sense to go up to Sal and say “hey, that time you tried that robbery, I was there. Let me tell you how horrible it was’ (which I would normally not recommend but we know and if she were able to see what really happened whenever amazigirl met Sal and listen a bit to others about how Sal behaves is that Sal is no longer going round acting out her anger). Unfortunately, this most likely won’t happen.
It’s rather more likely that Ethan, if Amber ever tells him who Sal is, will ask her about it. While Amber still fears her, he doesn’t.
All that Sal did to Amber was to rob a store while Amber was in it. That’s common assault if that.
Amber knifed Sal while Sal was defenceless. That’s assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Who owes an apology?
But Amber is not offering an apology. The thought of apologising hasn’t so much as crossed her mind. She wants MOAH REVENGE!, even though she’s already had a generous share, besides which Sal has already been duly punished by the law, and has reformed.
In short, you’re talking about the commenters rather than the comic.
Well, I don’t care if you want to be snide about other commenters, but sauce for the goose; you don’t have much room to complain if someone calls you on it.
A lifetime of psychological abuse by her father — probably physical abuse too — in an environment in which he repeated beat up her mother caused Amber serious mental harm. Sal’s contribution, which amounted to inadvertently frightening her for a few minutes, was trivial.
Sure. I understand why Amber is trying to take her rage out on Sal. I just don’t think that is either justified or good mental hygiene.
And I can’t I can’t agree that Sal’s “selfish assholery” caused Amber “years of mental harm”. Not even when the person who suggests it throws in a coda of smug condescension.
Yeah. Sal is the excuse. The inciting incident of disassociation. The proverbial straw on the camel’s back. But that makes her actions no less straw like and puts her under no obligation to put Amber’s mind back together for her.
I’ve checked back. No “probably” about the physical abuse: Amber’s father tortured her and hit her mother, aside from the unrelenting psychological abuse.
Only in the universe where Amber owes an apology for stabbing her through the hand and waltzing away with a clean slate because a white girl committed violence to a black girl.
Sal literally paid her debts to Society in general, and Amber in particular (If only because the latter STABBED HER IN THE FUCKING HAND).
I’m guessing she’s comparing Amber to herself when she committed the robberies. They’re doing stupid, violent, insane shit to prove a point and live up to some false standard.
Yeah, I installed a Sena device so I could just hang up on them, instead but, can’t hear or be heard by shit above 35mph.
—————–
Blue 2001 Katana 600. I gave it away when I left.
Frankly, neither of them covered themselves in glory here. The difference is that Amazi-Girl was rescued from near-certain death by someone she hates and fears, and thus has a chance to reexamine herself and her motives for running around in costume, while Sal just ‘proved’ once again that she’s above everyone else, and hasn’t learned a damn thing, as usual.
I don’t think this situation provided any opportunity of growth to Sal. While she could have paid Amazi-girl more attention had she been… healthier in her relation to other people, she definitely doesn’t owe her that, and definitely doens’t have much to gain here.
Kind of seems like Amber’s the only one who still has stuff to learn from the Amber/Sal connection anyway.
Sal’s moved past this incident. She’s already corrected that behavior. Her problems today are things like “Really clingy friend. Needs to make new friends so it’s not the end of the world when Marcie starts hanging out with somebody new.”
Amber’s the one who’s still stuck on it. Chasing after gunmen while picturing the “Punk with a Knife” from all those years ago. Getting lost in baseless paranoia about how surely Sal’s still up to no good and coming up with excuses to fight her. Excuses that are messing with her personal life. It sounds like Amber didn’t have a problem with under-age drinking before that fight but now she’s getting into fights with her boyfriend over it.
And, like, I don’t fault Amber for that or anything. She experiences traumatic flashbacks whenever she sees Sal, so that’s probably messing with her judgment pretty hard. But if we’re talking about giving Sal an opportunity to learn from this encounter, what would the lesson be? “Ah, guess I need to stop robbing gas stations.”
All of this. Both about the traumas really messing with her judgement and Sal’s real problems. Sal’s still got that rage in her, but is doing well to keep it in check, but that she is doing it with disengagement is making her co-dependent with her friendship and low on emotional support for her struggles. Which is why her moment of reaching out with Joyce was a really big moment for her. It’s connecting with someone who isn’t Marcie and getting entangled with their internal world.
She doesn’t want that to happen as she feels that is a risk and in some ways it is. I mean, she did go back to doing some dangerous riding because of it. But it’s a crucial step for her developing a healthier, more sustainable form of counter-culture introversion.
Any situation can provide the opportunity for growth if you pay the slightest bit of attention. If Sal missed it, that’s on her and nobody else.
When you get right down to it, both Sal and Amazi-Girl did good things here, and both of them made mistakes in the process. The point being, Sal has no room to talk since she just got done doing pretty much what she criticized Amazi-Girl for doing.
Something tells me that Sal has stormed off in a self-righteous huff a bit too soon. Based on those last couple of panels, I think that Amber is more thoroughly concussed than either of them thought.
By the way, Sal is entirely wrong about what motivates Amazi-Girl. Of course, how could she know the truth. It’s interesting though because it really does explain why she dislikes Amazi-Girl so much. She thinks that it’s a cry for attention, just like her own early-teen stupidity. You can certainly understand why she would consider that a bad road to walk.
I don’t think that ‘attention’ comes into it. She’s playing a role as you would expect the role to be played, hoping that it would act as a safety valve.
In the comics, yeah. In reality, it’s often from one person recognizing an internal struggle in someone that is similar to what they went through.
And that’s the problem, Amazi-girl wants to stay in the simplicity of comics and leave Amber with the messier gray-moral zones, but she’s chosen an arch-villain narrative about just a person. A person who shares a lot of the same mental struggles as herself.
And so Sal wants to use the reality version of it and Amazi-girl wants to just see the comic-book version. And they won’t see eye-to-eye until that discrepancy gets resolved, one way or another.
Though with all the talk about Amber v. Sal, I don’t think we’ve ever discussed how Ethan should feel about what happened, especially since he was the one who was actually taken hostage.
I dunno, I kind of hope he’s not just “water under the bridge” about it, even though he’s right to be way more concerned about Amber than “some girl.”
He seems to be pretty “Water under the bridge” about it. He was mentally healthy when the incident occurred so he’s been over all this for God only knows how long. Doesn’t experience any traumatic flashbacks when he sees Sal. Pretty sure he didn’t even recognize Sal as the girl from that night until Amber pointed it out.
Amber was in a much more fragile mental state on the night of the incident. Then her father spurred her even further, provoking her into some sort of violent breakdown before the night was over. He forewent therapy, choosing instead to put Amber through martial arts classes so she wouldn’t be such a weak embarrassment next time something like that happened. Probably talking about years of her father taking her to these training sessions that implicitly shame her for experiencing the incident. All and all it’s a much bigger deal for her.
Specifically, I meant how Ethan should deal with Sal. I get that he’s a way more emotionally healthy person than Amber, but I don’t think he should be all buddy buddy with Sal since she, you know, took him hostage and threatened to kill him. How do you accept somebody that committed a horrible, violent crime against you?
He’s absolutely right that Sal’s a different person now, but I saw that less as “it’s okay” and more “please stop climbing through windows, Amber. She’s not the Joker.”
Why not? Sal the adult isn’t the same as Sal the kid. Hell, Ethan probably is keeping in mind how he thought he was straight and was a skinny little whelp and had his mother’s love when he was that age and now everything is different, so yeah, why can’t these two different people be civil to each other. He’s not obligated to keep holding a grudge so that Amber feels less alone.
He also probably has the perspective that she was a desperate scared kid flailing out who was summarily arrested while Blaine was the person who emotionally and physically abused her her entire life. I think he understands a little more directly who is the origin of Amber’s darkest ghosts.
I’m not asking him to hold a grudge for Amber’s sake, I’m thinking that if he did hold a grudge against her it would be for threatening to kill him, but he’s putting that aside because he’s way more worried about Amber’s violence than Sal (and Ethan also correctly pointed out how if Sal was the same person she wouldn’t be at IU, so she had to have changed for the better), but either way it was still horrible for him to go through, and it was Sal’s doing. How do you forgive something like that? How do you decide that it was okay for someone to do horrible shit to you?
I guess? I don’t think I get the forgiveness thing. Like, everyone fucks up sometimes, but really vile, awful shit? I don’t know if I could bring myself to look past something like that.
Ethan doesn’t seem to plan on dealing with Sal at all. He hasn’t been all buddy buddy with her. He hasn’t sought her out at all. Since it doesn’t upset him to see Sal walking around he’s totally capable of just passing by her in the hallway without it being a whole thing. Met her at a party recently and didn’t even realize it.
Since Sal being around isn’t a problem for him he’s got better stuff to do than deal with her. The whole “I’m gay” situation has been eating up a lot of his time and energy.
Right, Ethan hasn’t been dealing with Sal at all. What I’m wondering is how he’s going to react to her when he gets involved. There’s a difference between coming to terms with a violent experience and actually coming face to face with your attacker.
I know he doesn’t plan to get involved, but if he knew that Amber was actually seeking out Sal to attack her, I doubt he’d just allow it to happen. Even if, hypothetically, he did still hate Sal he’d still try to stop Amber because her safety is what’s most important to him.
Still not foreshadowing. Just the authors flat out saying that no one is going to be hit by a truck. You can’t read that strip and then infer that this incident was going to happen.
Amazi-Stool is right. OK, maybe “foreshadowing” isn’t the right word, but especially during this strip, there were a lot of people who thought someone WOULD get hit by a truck. Hence, at the very least it would be a spoiler to say that nobody will get hit by the truck, because during that period it was plausible that somebody would get hit by a truck.
At the time, of course, it didn’t seem like much of a spoiler, but taking it at face value when the truck came would have predicted that AmaziGirl’s attempt to save Becky and Sal’s attempt to save AmaziGirl would not go as horribly wrong as most thought.
The problem is you assume that Sal wants to be a hero, rather than someone who just does the right thing. Sal dragged Amber to safety, roused her, and only left when Amber demonstrated she was awake and alert enough to immediately try and pick a fight (and probably figures that if she’s alert enough to pick a fight, she’s alert enough to get over to where the cops are and seek medical assistance).
Would love to know what the next couple of words out of Amber’s mouth were going to be. “You criminal”? “You knife-wielding thief?” In any case I’ll bet it would have revealed that Amazi-Girl knows Sal’s past and, as mild-mannered cowering little Amber who had been pushed up to and over the edge, was the person that stabbed her hand. Maybe not in so many word, but still…
Yeah, its hard not to see that Sal’s been the better helper to Joyce in this story. Amazi-Girl’s could get herself killed from doing shit like this.
Part of me wants to see a picture like the Marvel Comics’ Civil War with Sal on one side and Amazi-Girl on the other.
I figure Danny, Ethan, Dorothy, Dina and Becky would be Team Amazi-Girl and Marcie, Carla, Malaya and possibly Sarah would be Team Sal. Walky and Joyce would kinda be torn in the middle.
The problem with Sal is she thinks shes right and doesn’t consider the possibility she may in fact be wrong. In this storyline she inadvertently she used her sway over Joyce to convince Joyce to not go to the authorities in dealing with her assault: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/assault/
At the very least it would have meant Joyce could have got some much needed counselling but instead Sal just decided what was best for Joyce based on what happened to her
She just turns up and sounds like she knows whats shes talking about (from a very limited world view) and then leaves so as not to deal with any of the aftermath
FWIW and IIRC, Joyce herself didn’t want to go to the authorities because she was worried about her parents taking her away from school. Sal simply agreed with Joyce’s position. It’s not quite fair to list Joyce’s decision as Sal’s fault simply because Sal offered an opinion in line with Joyce’s own.
It was after three strips and Sal expressing her opinions on the matter when Joyce decided she didn’t want to go to the police
It also doesn’t make any difference that Sal though her course of action was the best course which was based on her experience only and nothing really to do with the situation Joyce was in
Another case where the wise, all-knowing Sal stepped into a situation that had nothing to do with her and influenced the situation because she knows best
anonymsly is right. Joyce didn’t want to go to the authorities while Dorothy and Sarah were trying to convince her, when Sal intervened and said that the police would be useless and they’d need to take care of it themselves, and made them realize they never got Ryan’s name.
So she isn’t the cause of why Joyce didn’t go to the cops, but she encouraged it.
Honestly, I think more of an issue with her resentment of authority figures was dissuading Joyce from seeing a therapist about her trauma in and instead speaking to a friend. Sal probably hasn’t had any positive interactions with court ordered therapy determined to figure out why she has the problem, but I think a trained professional would help Joyce more than say Dorothy or Sarah (though that’s ultimately up to Joyce either way).
And she did take note that the group should’ve brought her to the cops first if they really wanted to help her before the drugs wore off. Really it was more Joyce not wanting to get the cops involved.
Who is to say that not going to the cops was the wrong decision? I was trained as a sexual assault victim advocate in 1999 and I’ve literally lost count of how many people I’ve listened to and advocated for. Do you know how many of those people had police officers treat them like they were stupid, slutty, or deserved it? Almost all that called the cops. Do you know how many were actually retraumatized when dealing with the system? A ton. Do you know how many saw successful convictions of their rapists? NOT ONE.
Joyce could get counseling help without going to the authorities. And, if her friends had any idea how bad her PTSD and anxiety is, they would help her find those resources. That’s why Sal told her recently in strip that she needed to talk to someone.
Police aren’t a place of safety or protection for everyone.
Well, clearly she was the only one who could have intervened here, and she recognizes some of her own juvenile mistakes still happening with Amazigirl. Different presentations, but the same motivation (shitty parenting and lack of approval leads to acting out).
Sal isn’t wrong, nothing but truth there. But I kind of hate that it was her who said it. It was needed most definitely but I don’t know, with Sal and Amber it’s like the pot calling the kettle black sort of. She isn’t wrong with Amber. As awesome as it is to play a super hero, this is based in the real world where if you die you won’t come back in the next issue, flying and rotating the world backwards doesn’t reverse time, and having your parents murdered doesn’t mean you can take the law into your own hands. Amber can’t play the hero and if she is going to play one she’s doing it for all the wrong reasons. Which is why yeah Sal did the right thing here, walking away and not hearing it out from Amber because as tragic and traumatic as the past is for her that doesn’t justify the shit that happened now in the PRESENT. That’s like kidnappers and murders who were abused as children and they developed mental disorders and twisted mindsets and that’s the reason behind there madness and yeah I get it, but you’re still a kidnapper. You’re still a murder. That shit your doing is WRONG. But it just bothers me that is was Sal, not because she’s ONE of the reasons for Amber’s current mindset but because everyone seems to think Sal is pristine listerine and is an adult now. In this situation yeah, but Sal hasn’t really made the best decisions, and I don’t mean her knocking over convince stores, I mean some of the stuff she’s doing in the present. She’s in a better place than she was but I don’t think she’s made peace with her demons. I just find it odd that she’s forgotten completely about what happened while it’s permanently engrained into Amber’s mind. Ethan forgot but he at least had a vague remembrance of Sal after meeting Walky. But Sal has just completely blocked it out. I mean I get that she’s moving on with her life and would rather forget the past but to completely block it out? I don’t know it’s weird and probably unhealthy. And then there was the whole Malaya thing; you can hate someone plenty and not escalate things. And her tendency not to get close with people, her unresolved issues toward her parents and their mistreatment toward her, especially her mother. Just… A LOT of underlying issues and I don’t know she’s speaks the truth in other situations as well like with Jason and how he really didn’t help her but then I just thought to myself that, “You thought fucking him in the first place was going to magically get you a better grade.” and it’s just I don’t agree that Sal really is mature in the since people are saying. Yeah she handles her shit a whole better than Amber and she is the bigger person here and even in their last encounter she was but I just don’t think she’s suddenly a better person for being right. I guess after spewing all that I agree with her and her viewpoint but just because her and Amber are two different levels it doesn’t mean Sal is a saint. I guess what brought on all this was the fact that she and Joyce were just speeding down the highway to save Becky and really what were they going to do? It might not have ended up as bad as the crazy ass stunt Amber pulled but really what the fuck were they going to do to stop Becky’s kidnapping? Her father made it clear he wasn’t going to hesitate to “protect” Becky even if it meant shooting Amazi-girl so what would have stopped him from gunning down Sal and Joyce on her bike? I just……………sigh. Sal is right most definitely. Amber needs SERIOUS help and the outlet she’s using obviously isn’t the way to go but I don’t like that it’s Sal that told her like it is because though her shit is semi together she really isn’t the best person to me to be telling anyone shit. Trigger or no trigger.
Who was it that called for Amazi-Girl in the First Place?
Let’s say Amazi-Girl gets a call for help, shows up, then acts like Sal and says, I don’t care, this is not my problem, then walks away.
What would everyone think about her then?
Sal is chewing Amber out for trying to help after being asked to help.
What kind of crazy Bike Stunts would Sal have done to stop Ross if Amazi-Girl wasn’t there? With Joyce on the back of her bike and not wearing a helmet?
Personally, I think Sal is arrogant, self-centered and a hypocrite.
But Sal intervened to stop AmaziGirl, NOT to help Becky.
She stated that AG would make a real mess of things – which is perhaps justified, AG needs to grow up and up her game if she wants to be a real hero; good intentions and a black/ white view isn’t going to do it. And Sal is perhaps correct that AG’s reasons don’t help because they cloud her judgement.
But Sal was more interested in stopping AG, preaching at her in the above little speech, including a deasth threat (Sal, go fuck yourself), and generally being every bit as self-righteous as AG can be.
But without AG to show up, I’m not convinced Sal would have done anything.
She probably wouldn’t have done anything… because there was no need to, in her eyes. Becky’s kidnapping is a case for the police, not vigilantes.
Sal went because she knew that AG would escalate things, and possibly get someone killed. She only cared about stopping AG for that reason. In many ways, Sal was being quite heroic here. She wasn’t spiteful against AG, she just knew that someone would get hurt. (As it happens, it was AG herself.) Her “preaching” is still coming from a place of protecting others.
And she does have a point… AmaziGirl is constantly trying to prove something. She thinks it’s proving something to Sal… but it’s actually to prove something to her ass of a father. Even though she already beat him up, she’s ALWAYS going to be trying to prove something to him.
If you went back to that robbery, and Amber’s dad didn’t insult and provoke her, she never would have attacked Sal and stabbed her. She had no reason to, because Sal was already being arrested. Sal is not her arch-enemy, even though Amber really wants her to be. She put on the mask to prove something to her father, even though she says she wants nothing to do with him. Sal may have provided the set-up to the trauma that made AmaziGirl, but it was Amber’s dad that was the catalyst for it.
Yes, Sal and AmaziGirl were both “asked” to help by Joyce. That’s why both headed off in pursuit. The argument on that comes down to their methodologies. AmaziGirl was being forceful, and Sal was being reactive. Now, Sal probably wouldn’t have had to do any fancy tricks to stop ToeDad, they just have to follow, and keep following. Because the police would eventually get there, and they would stop his car… and Sal and Joyce would be nearby, so Joyce could get to Becky instantly. Any tricks Sal had to do would be reactive, if Ross pulled the gun on them, or what actually happened, if AmaziGirl was about to be creamed by a Truck.
Sal’s threat is understandable. Frankly, most death threats like that are fairly empty… because unless Sal has taken a life, which I doubt, she won’t do it now. But she would be pissed if AG did recklessly put people’s lives in danger, again… justifiably. So a showdown, beat-em-up, would probably occur… but not death. But she’s pissed that AmaziGirl was reckless. We’ve all been pissed at someone for doing something stupid, even if it didn’t hurt us personally. We’ve all said something to the effect of, “I’ll kill you if you do that again.” Did you mean it? Not literally… but you had anger, and you were expressing it.
Willis clearly knows what makes the comic book hero and villain setup so compelling. They’re driven by the same thing deep down but they can’t reconcile their beliefs; that’s great material.
Just want to say congrats on continuing to support the perception:
“Sal is so cooooool!”
Which you could easily have lost as we got to know her better. But you didn’t.
Oh, those second and third panels are so fucking delicious. Amber’s such a piece of trash. She’s almost horrible enough that I’m dissapointed she didn’t cry in the third panel, but I’m not quite that sadistic about her yet. We’ll probably get there eventually, though. She’s one of the very few characters that has yet to show any inkling to becoming a better person.
One thing I don´t like about what Sal has just said is “… I will end you (if you continue to do this)”, taking things almost to a personal level. Well, it´s consistent in a way (she won´t snitch a word to the police or authorities, just because she doesn´t trust them), in a sense it´s on her own code of morals, but still, this isn´t the best solution. I would have preferred that another person, perhaps Ethan, would have confronted AG/Amber about this. Heck, even a local sheriff or someone from the ambulance that´s about to come. Sal´s lack of interest just killed the little glimpse of catharsis almost breaking out from AG´s mouth in panel three. Sal does have little patience, and she isn´t as mature as she thinks she is. She won´t hear out “a complete stranger”, but surely, has time to say her piece, shut her off and go away in a motorcicle. Yeah, right. Sal´s inexperience in the ways of life is only marginally lesser than Amber´s, and no, that´s no good. They both are rock bottom still, one way or another. And that´s why there´s still room to things going sour. Both girl´s won´t make compromises in their ways.
I think she just knows that AmaziGirl has something to prove. Just like Sal, always felt like she had something to prove, that’s why she acted out and became a juvenille delinquent. It’s how they directed their anger, and while one went crime, the other went vigilante… they do share that in common.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 14h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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You have no idea
“You mean parental sexist assholishness? WHOA, it’s like we’re TWINS”
…no wait XD
‘It’s like we’re triplets!’
Four words…
Sal isn’t wrong. No that’s three words.
*Sal is not wrong.
fify
Sal is not completely wrong. :-P.
Your triplet sister, AmaziGirl
Unless AmaziGirl is Walky, in which case “Your twin brother, David”
That would explain so much.
Sal’s right, though.
Sal is always right in my book. ♥
Agree, Sal is right.
She was even right about Amazi-Girl escalating things. Amazi-girl is even still trying to escalate things right now. Fortunately, Sal isn’t having any of it– Sal de-escalates it and just leaves.
Sal did not de-escelate anything. She threatened AG (a gen-u-ine Hollywood style I’m so cool death threat) and did everything she could to put AG on the defensive. In reality this ensures AG would double down on her actions.
Amber is not self-aware enough, certainly not in her AG persona, to see Sal’s ham fisted point. And such a statement coming from someone like Sal when there is clearly no love lost between them, is even less likely to be considered for it’s possible validity.
Sal’s inexperienced, actually really quite awful with people, and thinks she’s smarter than she is (damn but do I know that type) so she may not be doing it intentionally. Worse she’s working overtime to look cool – threaten her life, make my arrogant speech, put on my helmet and ride off on my motorcycle with a tight spin and a spray of gravel, I’m so cool. And ironically Sal’s ‘help’ would make things worse, just as she accuses AG of doing, and for the same reasons that her motivations are clouding her judgement.
Ok, I have to defend Amber a bit here. Joyce called her for help in a situation guaranteed to hit her dad-rage buttons. She knew she was out of her depth and I think would have been happy to draw the passing cops’ attention to the car, even knowing that she probably would have been arrested too. When the police were obviously going the wrong way, she thought it was totally up to her to rescue Becky. Yes, she has a superhero hammer and everything looks like a nail, but what exactly was *Sal’s* plan to stop the car? If they had arrived on a speeding bike with no Amazi-Girl involved, basically you still would have had Toe-dad with a gun, police going in the other direction, and no way to get Becky out. I thought no it’s possible for Amber to have serious issues that affect why and how she engages, but still be pretty darn heroic. She did more to help than anyone else, frankly Joyce included.
Why would she need a plan to stop the car? She has a motorbike and a mobile… she could follow at a distance and keep the cops updated on the kidnapping-in-progress. That’s kinda her point: she has nothing to prove by playing the hero and she was still better equipped to handle the job. Amber had no plan, no backup, no *thought* except her own need to save someone, and very nearly got everyone killed.
Sal discouraged Joyce from going to the POLICE after her near rape because she doesn’t believe in Authority one bit…
“We’re not so different, you and I…”
Willis, why does your content upload at 12:04?
Keeps us on our toes.
Solely so that we will talk about it, it seems
sorry I broke it by being first too many days in a row, I’ll stop =B
(pfff)
I can’t figure out if it’s the first line or the second which is the joke.
just gonna put this here
I remember when it used to be 0:01 NY Time but in the last year or so, it became 0:02 then 0:03 and now it’s 0:04.
Daylight Losing Time
Ironically, there seems to be MORE sun than ever over here in Oz.
Sunny days, public health care, sharks.
What is there to complain about, really?
racismAs long as there is at least two races, there will always be racism.
Maybe, but I’m not resigned to it.
I don’t even know where you would go to resign.
As long as there are criminals and a police state there will be bigotry against vigilanties.
(and how and why did my spell correction get turned off)
@Plasma Mongoose:
It’s pretty lazy to assume failure.
@Clif:
As there should be. Self Help is not to our advantage unless a state is so far-gone that if leaving is an option, you should take it, and ta that point the useful form of SElf Help is straight revolution. As terribly bigoted as police can be, the public will usually be worse, although not necessarily to the same people. As someone with shitty fucking odds with the police for a number of reasons, I’ll take it, over the days the mob got their way. Vigilantes are like dictators – it’s fine when they’re ‘virtuous’, but the second you get a bad one they’re fucking poison (And they’re basically all bad). Except unlike dictators, vigilantes encourage more vigilantes, thus increasing the number of ‘unvirtuous’ candidates you will get.
What we need is to get people to become too lazy to think in racist terms.
spiders
Drop bears. Spiders. Snakes. Bloodthirsty cassowaries.
Et cetera.
I prefer “Daylight Wastings Time.”
“Damnyou Willis Time”
Isn’t that all the time, though?
Nah just when the story gets too interesting. ¨You made a car crash!?! Damn you Willis!¨
That should be what it’s called when we’re not on DST.
Like now! We’re on Daylight Losing Time until Spring Forward
The time changes would be less galling if they made them 3-day hollidays.
I wouldn’t put it past The Author to purposely randomize the time by a few minutes, just to mess with the firsters XD
but then how would I cockblock them =C
(j/k tbh IDGAF)
Cuz the Earth’s rotation is slowing down >.>
Willis’ rotation is slowing down. It’s age, it is. We all spin more slowly with the passage of years.
So Willis’ comic book time is affecting our Earth? CRIKEY!
Crap! Before long a week will last 2 years!
Well, at least then I’ll stop hearing my friends (and hell, me too) say “why is my kid growing up so fast?! I want him/her to stay little just a bit longer.”
His comic book time is affecting the earth and before long a week will last two years?
I only get a check once a month, so at least eight years?
Damn you Willis!
For me, it says that this comic and the first comment on it both happened at 12:01
Back in the 13th century?
Oh, no. It’s happening already.
Ahhhhhhhh!!!
Remember, according to the Buffer Watch he’s already writing strips in February of next year. Sending comics back in time to us is okay because comics are data, which makes this merely an Ontological Paradox.
But according to Pratchett’s L-Space Theorum, information has weight (Information = Knowledge. Knowledge = Power. Power = Energy. Energy = Matter. Matter = Mass.), and all mass distorts the spacetime continuum. So even sending data back in time causes certain ripples.
All in all, I think it’s impressive that Willis has been able to consistently hit the right day, let alone hour, considering that his time travel apparatus is made out of Transformers figures and powered by packets of Taco Bell Fire Sauce.
A certain amount of drift was inevitable, especially since his Flux Capacitor is just Generations Drift.
I miss when things were just timey-wimey.
I <3 this ^
(well…now, both Doctor_Who and MtL)
So, of course, I had to look up if there was a BttF Time Machine Transformer. Apparently there isn’t, but there is a Delorean named Swindler (and the TFWiki does not disappoint in having BttF jokes on his page).
I call it Kyōma’s Nostalgia Drive! Real name TBA.
Future Gadget 204, 2nd Edition Ver. 2.31!
Technically, not all matter has mass. Two known particles, photons and gluons, are massless, meaning the equation is dependent on the nature of the information being carried. Now, seeing as ‘knowledge’ is a subjective property, we can assume it is dependent on the presence of consciousness. And if it is ever scientifically proven that consciousness itself is a particle (referred to some as a psion, literally ‘thought particle’) then it is likely that consciousness is massless, else it would have been detected in observer-dependent quantum physics experiments. If, however conscioussness is the fifth fundemental force, making knowledge the force-carrier for consciousness, it is possible that knowledge has mass.
As far as the aforementioned time machine goes, it should be fine as long as he used G1 diecast construction (its a lost art), though i think it would run a bit more efficiently on Volcano sauce.
While photons and such rif-raf have no rest mass, they do have relativistic mass as evidenced by the fact that gravity bends light.
There is no evidence that consciousness is a particle and a moderate amount of evidence it is a brain state. Information on the other hand seems to be negative entropy which links it pretty solidly to the orginization of mass-energy.
Due to quantum theory then, information and anti-information can sponainouly form and cancel, but in the vacentity of a black hole, if the anti-information goes into the black hole it becomes unavailable to the rest of the universe and we are left with a small excess of information. This explains why the miniture black hole hidden in the center of the earth allows there to be enough information for life to exist on its surface. It also explains why the secret civilizations existing below the earth’s surface are more advnced; they have access to more free information.
According to the last What-If, if th e earth was made of protons and the moon electrons, the question falls apart because the energy needed to hold the electrons that close together would make a black hole, despite the particals haveing practicly no mass.
Force of any kind has mass, apparently.
Is it bad that I understood everything you just said there?
Very bad.
You just got it disappeared and then replaced with something even more complex.
I also got everything that Clif, Arkious Vade, and zach said, too.
This is very, very bad.
this is brilliant.
this might be the best comment on this thread
On my screen, it says 12:01, why are we seeing different digits ?
Because we’re all hitting the server at the stroke of midnight to get the latest strip. Then hit reload when it isn’t there. Repeat.
We’re lucky the server doesn’t shut down, thinking it’s under a DoS attack, and not just delay the strip by 4 minutes.
My guess is too many people refreshing the page every ten seconds. Like a mini-DDOS attack.
Slay
Ohhhhh, Sal. You have NO idea.
Yeah, and she doesn’t care. Although to be fair there are times when knowing the “why” of a thing is trumped by the “what are we going to do about it”. Which is not to say origins should always be completely disregarded in the face of pragmatism, it’s just that figuring out how a wildfire got going is generally saved for when all the flames are out and the danger has passed.
“You’re a danger to others.”
“But I do this because–”
“No really, dial it back or I’ll do it for you.”
^my take on this strip
Everything’s more dramatic with a motorcycle.
It’s even more dramatic-er if there’s explosions in the background.
“Cough Michael Bay cough”
I wanna see an exploding Michael Bay … you know, for science.
When I made you, you made me too.
It’s like that Joker/Batman conversation from the ’89 movie.
Pretty much but Sal doesn’t realise that yet.
Haha yes, now that you mention it. It really is.
Mutually made.
But can you fill that sunken AG/Sal ship with metaphorical ping-pong balls and set it afloat again?
like Megabyte and Hexadecimal
It’s nice to see you younger folks remember the classics.
Excuse me-I need to go yell at some kids on my lawn and renew my AARP membership.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/reboot-of-reboot-officially-coming-to-tv-with-26-new-episodes-1.3104830
(funny thing, AARP started sending me shit, and I’m nowhere near old enough)
((IN MY MIND))
(((NO REALLY GADDAMMIT I AIN’T THAT OLD FFS)))
(((granted, “mix of live action and computer animation” = ANEURYSM = OLD FARTDOM so maybe I’d better sign up after all))))
I can’t wait for the wacky hijinks of Amber trying to pretend she doesn’t have several broken ribs and a concussion in the next weeks of school
It’ll take her forever to heal up. Or maybe the strip will fast-forward to healed Amber?
And then nothing at all of consequence happened for the next three months.
Nah, Joyce joins the roller derby team with Marcie and Malaya, who are now in a poly-thing with Grace and Mandy. Feel free to speculate on the rest.
Willis was asking if he could get away with a time skip a while back…
I can’t wait for an Amazigirl with a head injury and no transportation to make it away from the scene of a highway accident with a flood of police on the way. Then we’ll deal with the school side of it.
::Reads alt text::
Like this?.
that’s right, amber! double over and puke! that’ll show her
Sal wins.
Seriously Amber, take five.
Damn! Sal punched Amber in the Inciting Incident!
Seems that their history will remain as such for now
Yeah, I’m kinda disappointed. I was hoping the robbery would come up.
It almost did, but they kept interrupting each other. : /
Does their history even matter now? Sal just saved her life.
At this point it feels wrong to even say “well I get why Amber hates her because past stuff” because Sal just kind of conclusively proven she’s not that person anymore (or more specifically, the person Amber decided she was).
Of course it matters. Just because Sal is a different person now doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t magically erase the psychological damage that’s been done.
“My name is Amber O’Malley!”
“Who?”
Amber:*removes mask* “See!”
Sal: …
Amber: *adds glasses*
Sal: …
“Yeah ah’ve no clue who you are. Bye”
“My name is Amber O’Malley. You scared my best friend. Prepare to get your hand stabbed… uh, again, I guess.”
It really, really sucks when your criminal nemesis has already been appropriately punished under the law, has reformed, and is getting her life back together as a productive member of society.
What would Batman do?
Keep a very close eye on her and be prepared to return her to Arkham at the slightest provocation.
In other words, he’d be an authoritarian shithead who violates due process because of preconceived notions, and quite possibly being the thing that teaches her crime’s her only option because it’s all that can reasonably be expected of her.
Sounds about right for AG.
And for Batman.
i seem to remember, in the 90s cartoon (Harley’s Holiday), Batman was sad and sympathetic when Harley Quinn ended up (accidentally) in trouble after she served her time. but then again, Harley wasn’t the one who killed Batman’s parents, thus creating him. but it has always made me think that Batman is willing to believe someone can reform (otherwise why bother locking them up?)
The animated series batman seems a little less . . . Terrible than future gruff batmans.
part of that was from the mandate to NEVER revisit the origin story as a plot point, because PROGRESS ffs
You do bring up a good point. Would Sal even remember Amber? Or that she was the one who stabbed her?
“For me, it was Tuesday.”
Wth? It was Tuesday?
Apologies, for some reason the page dislikes “Street Fighter” quotes.
Too many people used that line so it’s been automatically censored.
Besides, everyone knows the best line from that movie is “Quick; change the channel!”
I’m not convinced Sal isn’t still fueled by some of the same stuff she was years ago.
Unless she means some substance of course. Then, no, Sal, you’re wrong.
If the stuff is “being a narcissistic thrill junkie using violence to fill an emptiness inside”, yeah, I could see that.
It’s in her, but she’s not letting that anger at the world be her sole drive anymore. She’s made piece with that tendency and you see her struggle with it at points (most notably when Jason betrays her with his bad grade, when she was fighting with Malaya, and when Amazi-girl nearly got under her skin), but she tries to play it cool and find other ways around a problem besides violence.
Neither of them is free from that rage of injustice and painful abusive upbringing (with one albeit more abusive than the other), but Sal is a lot further along in her recognition and recovery. She’s seeing a fellow traveler making the same mistakes she did and that hurts her, because it’s always painful watching someone walk into the same spike traps you did and not being able to give them the map out of the dungeon.
Hot damn, I’ve never gotten here early before!
I think this was a very long time in coming. Seems Sal knew just how to twist the knife…
ha, “twist the knife.” I see what you did there. I like it.
That expression sure came in handy.
Well, if the glove fits…
And the line between heroine and anti-heroine blurs some more…
Sal may have no idea why, but honestly, she isn’t wrong. Amazigirl could have injured someone seriously. Hell, her stunt could have KILLED Becky. Amazigirl needs to, honestly, grow up a bit and learn to actually control her anger instead of be controlled by it.
Agreed. And clearly, her being Amazi-Girl is NOT helping her work through any of her old issues. She needs to do something more healthy and less dangerous to deal with her problems.
She needs to read up more about dinosaurs, that has worked out for Dina so far.
And made her trying to assault a grown up toe 3x her size in the woods as a result.
How is it “clearly” not helping ? I can’t see that.
Because every run-in with Sal is enough to send her into a panicked, hysterical state. So clearly, her dangerous vigilantism is NOT helping her deal with her old issues, as one tiny scratch to the surface causes them to all burst out as raw as ever. She needs HELP, not dangerous stunts on moving vehicles.
“She needs HELP, not dangerous stunts on moving vehicles.”
Why not both ?
And the fact that she is not well, doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t have been even WORSE if she hadn’t been Amazi-Girl
I really don’t understand why you’re so hell-bent on justifying her reckless, destructive, and, frankly, VERY illegal behavior. It’s not healthy or practical, and if she keeps it up, she or someone else is going to get badly hurt.
Because I disagree with your assesment of her behaviour.
I think she’s doing a lot of good, it might be destructive, but I always think it’s better to live a short life in the service of others than a long life for yourself.
There will always be risks, no matter how you live.
We see it here in that Amber has just chosen to discount it and focus on the initial image.
One of Amber’s worst behaviors is that she’s decided inconsistency will be the thing that will “ruin” Amazi-girl and corrupt her.
And the reason that that is worse than the self-destruction is that life is all about making small inconsistencies and growing by the points where the theory of morality struggles against reality. Making every “good” act something she MUST SUCCEED AT NO MATTER WHAT, leads her to undergo extremely life-threatening actions like today. Similarly, making it so that she is inflexible with her enforcement of rules in this persona is going to start being a toxic presence in her relationships.
And we see today the worst of it. When presented with evidence that would run counter to her narrative, she just elides right past it and chooses to stay angry and feels fully justified still viewing a grown-up version of a kid with a knife as some super nemesis. No “thank you citizen” or “despite your help, I had it under control”. Instead it’s just ignoring the admissions of help and antagonizations and picking of fights. Sal shows nothing but support, and Amazi-girl throw it back in her face because she needs to view Sal as bad to preserve her mythology of an unchanging narrative of good and evil, where the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys always come back and do wrong.
And this will start interfering with the good parts of her vigilanteism, because being inflexible and viewing all laws as equal to build a fiction of consistency is a great way to go from being that helpful local hero who knocks down harassers and bike thieves to some authoritarian clown in tights who harshes people smoking some weed or downing a beer.
Amber needs to allow Amazi-girl to have the same “inconsistencies” she extends to herself before its too late.
I don’t agree that Ambers decision is inconsistency that will ruin her, I think it is failure that she is afraid of.
I agree she’s inflexible in viewing herself as on one side and everyone else on the other, when she’s in her Amazi-Girl guise. It’s already interfering with her vigilantism as per her remarks previous that she can not let down anyone.
I think that she may know who and what Sal is to her based on her reaction when she woke up as Amber. That looked like recognition and fear.
When she snapped back to AG, the recognition is gone, but the knowledge remains although she won’t acknowledge it – a recurring pattern.
That incident shows a definite split in her two personalties maybe getting deeper?
Amber needs professional help before she kills herself or someone else.
“She may know who Sal is to her”. There is no “may”. She knows. She’s had flashbacks from the robbery every time she’s seen Sal.
I think Amazi-Girl is Amber’s overcompensation for her inaction during the convenience store robbery. Her best (and only?) friend was being held at knifepoint by another kid their own age, but she didn’t do anything but hide in the corner sniveling until after the police arrived. If Amazi-Girl was there, then Ethan would not have been hurt. Never mind that he wasn’t hurt anyway, and has since put the incident behind him. (He and Sal didn’t even recognize each other at the party a couple storylines ago!)
She reminds herself of the robbery every time she puts the costume on, lets the memory consume her, and uses it to fuel her determination toward unrealistic single-handed heroism. She let Ethan down that day years ago, and refuses to let anyone else down again, no matter the personal cost.
I agree failure haunts her, but she also makes noise about inconsistency and seems to view it as a thing that separates her alters:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/consistent/
You’re right. And I would go further and say that there aren’t really any good parts of her vigilantism. It’s a wholly unhealthy and destructive activity.
But then, I’m pretty much a “due process” hard-liner.
Aye. Self Help is all well and good when its pointed at people who are committing violent crimes like robbery, but Amber’s already pointed it at people who she has no business being violent to. And it’s the inevitable thing tht starts to happen with Self Help.
Amber stopped some obvious crimes that should be, but she exalts Self Help, and even on her own, she has done some objectionable, wrong shit with that Self Help – And that’s the BEST case. There’s plenty of much worse ones (and the Best Case put someone in the hospital pointlessly)
Right! Let’s form a militia to defend ourselves from all these shit-fueled vigilantes!
(Er, whoops…)
“When presented with evidence that would run counter to her narrative, she just elides right past it ”
Those kind of thing will probably take a bit to sink in.
“Making every “good” act something she MUST SUCCEED AT NO MATTER WHAT, leads her to undergo extremely life-threatening actions like today. ”
It also lead to Becky’s rescue. Why shouldn’t every good act be something you should succeed at no matter what ? I’ve always lived by that rule, and I think everyone would benefit from that line of thought.
Same with consistency. Life doesn’t HAVE to be inconsistent, that seems to me a modern thing that has spread through a combination of laziness and people not willing to commit to anything anymore.
Consistency and inflexibility is the not same though, I would agree she needs to learn more flexibility. But those other things you mention ? Those things make her a better person in my view.
Forgot this part of your post:
” No “thank you citizen” or “despite your help, I had it under control”. Instead it’s just ignoring the admissions of help and antagonizations and picking of fights. Sal shows nothing but support, and Amazi-girl throw it back in her face because she needs to view Sal as bad to preserve her mythology of an unchanging narrative of good and evil, where the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys always come back and do wrong.”
Well… it seems to me she is not even aware of the effort Sal went to, or even that she rescued her at all. Sal doesn’t get the chance to tell her, only that she got here away from the cops, and since her main reaction to conflict is to escape she would rather just ride away on her bike than try to wait until Amazi-Girl is calm enough to explain her situation.
Shame, since she was also very close to finding out where Amazi-Girl comes from, and that could’ve been helpful for them both I suppose.
“Hell, her stunt could have KILLED Becky. ”
As could any responders action in that situation, official or not.
Odds on any of the other options deliberately taking out the car’s tires, while there’s no-one in control of steering it, on a 55mph two-lane road?
Pretty high actually
Eh, for my analysis I was also counting on ToeDad’s bad choices being directly related to there being someone attached to / on top of the car, and that a police chase wouldn’t have ended the same way.
You seem hell bent on defending her, so I’m not going to argue really but add another point: Yes, Becky got saved. Yeah, it was badass and cool of Amazigirl. But now Amazigirl has been hit by a car (my friend just got in a got crash, he’s all banged up and he was actually in the car wearing a seatbelt), thrown off another car, snatched out of the air by a motorcycle, and almost got shot. Ignoring the results of her good actions (that were dangerous and irrationally done), the personal injuries she has just sustained are serious and could have handicapped her for life. She isn’t Bruce Wayne. She doesn’t have the money to get hurt continuously and go to a fancy Butler to take care of her.
Wouldn’t you agree there’s a better way to get through some mental issues other than by getting yourself hurt? Thats’ generally the consensus when people are doing things like refusing to eat, binging and purging or cutting themselves.
“Wouldn’t you agree there’s a better way to get through some mental issues other than by getting yourself hurt? ”
That depends, better for YOURSELF, yes, but not better for the rest of the world. Sometimes you need to forget about your own needs, even though our modern culture seems to have made it so that your own needs are supposed to be the most important thing in your life.
And if you already have so many problems that your life is going to be crap anyway, why not just focus on trying to make the world better instead ?
Probably not a “could have” at this point, since they were all about to die until Sal showed up. That said, Sal really didn’t need to bring along a passenger with no helmet….
Ohh, do we get Sal backstory?
Ok now see a doctor please you’re bleeding.
I’m not worried about the bleeding: it looks superficial. I’m worried about the recent loss of consciousness, the weakness and dizziness, and what I suspect to be nausea.
Agree, concussion from the looks of it. And maybe broken ribs or at least sprains.
Just so. And it is worth checking for skull fractures and intracranial bleeding. Mini neurological, CT scan, physical exam and x-ray of anything that shows up in that, overnight observation.
Psychiatric referral.
I feel like Amber would be to proud to even admit to herself that she’s injured and would probably try to drag herself from the scene rather than seek medical attention.
She might. And that might turn out to be a spectacularly bad idea. The latest in a series.
Tomorrow’s the ambulance outside the hospital scene, but that’s probably for Ross.
How is she going to explain her injuries as Amber? Playing DS while walking down the stairs?
Heh! That’s probably more plausible than my suggestion: falling of a motorbike.
Dang! Sal roasted her ass
UUFFF damn right.
Wow… I like Sal even more now for that. Amber/Amazi-Girl will get someone else hurt at some point and needs to realize that. She should be in therapy not acting out vigilante fantasies.
I love Sal! And I love that she’s finally getting some love in the comments. (I know some of you have been with me from the start, but I mean more than the loyal few.)
Same.
No, she doesn’t “need” to realize that. That’s something JJJJJ Jameson would’ve said. People keep saying she put so many people at risk during the resuce, yet I fail to see how she could’ve handled that situation any better.
I mean, right off the bat one option Amazigirl has that Spider-Man doesn’t is to just leave this to the trained professionals. Because Ross isn’t flying around on a goblin glider and Amazigirl isn’t the only person with the Spider Powers needed to keep up with him, excepting of course other similarly untrained vigilantes.
Uh, the “trained professionals” again.
I will link to a previous comment that shows how good this alternative works in practice.
Can you not use the actual death of a child to win an internet argument, please?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/when-americans-lynched-mexicans.html
Here, a less sexy example from the history of hispnic people (Mexicans in the particular, so not as ‘mine’ as it could be) of wht happened when we left the law in the hands of Self Help. You think it’s bad now? NOW it’s newsworthy. NOW it’s at least on paper a fucking travesty. Self Help is worse than the police.
Self Help is worse than the police if you aaren’t white. Self help is worse than the police if you’re trans. Self Help is worse than the police if you’re gay. The sole reason I can look at the police as worth saving *without looking outside* the USA (Which I also do) is that Self Help is worse than them, and our own history demonstrates this perfectly adequately. I will *NOT* fucking see us exalt the mob merely because our cops are still bastards. The mob was infinitely worse to us than the cops. None of this exonerates the cops – they are still racist bastards to a degree that should be unconscionable. But I will not see us give up protections merely because we’ve forgotten how much worse it got, and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.
What is the relevance of what you just wrote ?
Yes, mobs can do a lot of bad shit, but ORGANISED, OFFICIAL mobs can do a LOT WORSE.
And we were talking about vigilantes, not mobs, but I’ll give you that, SOME vigilantes are also bastards, so what ? ANYONE can be a bastard, being official doesn’t lessen that risk.
I have no idea why you are talking about “white people” though, one of the most active vigilantes today, Phoenix Jones, is definitively not white.
No, the empirical evidence *VERY* strongly indicates that the cops don’t kill sa many people as vigilantes used to. It’s far rarer now than it was, and I’m quite fucking aware of how common it is now, in spite of how many more people there are in the USA as a whole. Now, even if this is SOLELY because there are fewer cops now than there were vigilantes (A bold claim, and I’m not sure how the number of cops now compares to the size of the lynch mobs of yesteryear, and it’s probably not measurable because where would we get THAT data?)… THATS STILL PART OF THE POINT. Making them official keeps their numbers down, because the state will only put so many people on its payroll.
As far as White People, that’d be the stool. And do you really need me to explain the relevance? “Hey this is a bunch of people vigilantes killed from something fairly close to my own history, and in pretty recent memory. Vigilantes fucking suck too, and pretty esaily arguably MORE than the cops.” Do you just refuse to see that?
I mean, I don’t exactly get MAD at people who the system despises, and who won’t get any help from that system. If I found out about a hispanic vigilante, I get that, since humans have punishment-oriented lizard brains. But yer fuckin’ hurting us in the long run by making vigilantism look cool – that ends with us on a fucking pole, no matter what pretty suits you put on.
Lynch mobs are NOT vigilantes. Organised forces have ALWAYS committed more atrocious acts throughout history than ANY personal vigilantes ever have. That’s actually fact. And most of those lynch mobs you were talking about were often LEAD by that times version of the police, sheriffs organised them and “deputised” angry racists.
Concentration camps are a result of letting the “officials” do all the work. No public concentration of racists have managed to kill so many people as they did.
And I have no idea what this sentence means:
““Hey this is a bunch of people vigilantes killed from something fairly close to my own history, and in pretty recent memory. Vigilantes fucking suck too, and pretty esaily arguably MORE than the cops.” ”
I don’t mean the relevance, I mean what are you trying to say ?
And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race, so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”
Again, vigilantes are all races, always have been.
um, lol. Lynch mobs are EXPLICITLY Vigilantes (strictly speaking, it’s more accurate to say the mob is made up of vigilantes). They’re private citizens enacting violence to allegedly uphold community rules. That’s literally all a vigilante is.
“. And most of those lynch mobs you were talking about were often LEAD by that times version of the police, sheriffs organised them and “deputised” angry racists.”
Stop learning things from movies. Lynch mobs far more frequently had implicit, not explicit, police support.
“Organised forces have ALWAYS committed more atrocious acts throughout history than ANY personal vigilantes ever have.”
Only when their citizens are willing to do worse on their own. The state is an aggregate of power – of course everything big gets funnelled through it.
Also, I’m so happy white people are using a feeble grasp of history to argue their idiotic libertarian points! You think the murder of jews in europe started with the concentration of that power in the state? Maybe look at the events t hat lead to so many ‘goldmanns’ and ‘goldbergs’, and why so many came to the states. Spoiler alert: extrajudicial violence against Jews vastly preceded state violence against them, go fig. It’s like you don’t get aa state that racist without the public already being that racist – which, again, is why you’re better off leashing that public. Obviously you should leash the police too, but the police are FAR easier to run in a less terrible manner – granted, this is a point you have to actually look outside the USA for (and preferably, understand a god damned thing you see)
“And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race”
Um, sure, if you leave the US. Here in the USA, however…
[quote] so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”[/quote]
I’m sure you don’t.
Actually, maybe you reaally don’t. Maybe you haven’t fucking noticed, but you aren’t talking to the biggest fan of the police. They are a direct threat to my safety when I interact with them, and I go well out of my way to avoid them and immigracion despite being a legal citizen without a mark on her record besides traffic violations. Maybe you should fucking consider that there’s a god damned reason I’m defending the core concept, and saying they are still better for me than the mob. You’re trying to throw out concrete protections (From the mob, if literally only by making them believe they don’t need to engage in Self Help) because of some asinine point that you don’t understand. I will not have you use either my history, or someone else’s, which you don’t even get, to hurt me, or people like me. You clearly don’t care what happens, because you already knew the correct answer, then latched onto a sexy-sounding, shallow point from the news. Some of us don’t have the fucking luxury, because we raen’t fucking aaround with Other People’s Lives.
Though really, I’m wasting my time, because you are off in some fucking parallel earth ignoring everything that gets in the way of your precious pure ideology cinnamon buns.
You just keep ignoring that I am using the word MORE in “official forces has always committed MORE reciprocities against the public than any unofficial ones”
Those are facts you can look up, numbers, not opinions. And MORE doesn’t mean that civilians ALSO have done fucked up things, but NEVER to the extent that official forces has.
I’m not saying that police offers NO protection, but it’s a small percentage of them that actually offers ANY protection, and it just sounds a bit naive to believe they are better than civilians.
“And again, there is no higher percentage of white vigilantes than any other race”
Um, sure, if you leave the US. Here in the USA, however…”
No, I was talking about the US actually. Again, Phoenix Jones seems to be the figurehead for superheroes in the USA and is not white.
“quote] so I have no idea what you meant by “and I’m sure as fuck not letting white people do it for us.”[/quote]
I’m sure you don’t.”
No, I don’t and you STILL haven’t explained it.
And how is getting MORE protectors throwing OUT something ?
” I will not have you use either my history, or someone else’s, which you don’t even get, to hurt me, or people like me.”
What do you mean, people like you ? I’m not trying to HURT anyone, not are the superheroes you are bashing, most of them are really peaceful even. And I don’t even know your history, I know OUR history though, the history of the world, which is what I was referring to.
“You clearly don’t care what happens, because you already knew the correct answer, then latched onto a sexy-sounding, shallow point from the news.”
What?! If I didn’t care, why am I trying to defend these superheroes ? They get enough guff as it is.
And a vigilante, in this context, is not a crazed mob, it’s individuals who dress up to fight crime and help people in need.
“I’m not saying that police offers NO protection, but it’s a small percentage of them that actually offers ANY protection, and it just sounds a bit naive to believe they are better than civilians.”
You are a fucking moron, raen’t you? I’m not saying the police re better people – I am saying that they prevent the mob from engaging in Self Help, not because they LIKE me, or because they ACTUALLY INTEND to protect me. I’m saying that the people most likely to be the mob? They believe the system works. Privileged people have a conception tht the system works, so even if they think I’m some terrible person who’s done criminal acts, they are content leaving it to the police to sort out. This is protection – it’s the lowest form of protection, but it’s a very real protection just the same. The police demonstrably require higher standards to really get going. Even if the police were EXACTLY as bad as the citizens who would engage in Self Help, there are fewer police than there are people inclined to Self Help on their own. Those people are held in check because they think the system works. The people whom it DOESN’T work for? I’m less apt to judge. But by encouraging Self Help (And the act of engaging in it already makes it sound like a better idea), they erode the protection I have from the mob – the protection that the system (allegedly) works, and can be trusted to deal with things. For those of us who would be murdered by their fellow citizens anyway, this is pretty useful – and it’s telling tht it’s people who /know/ the system is broken who are more likely to engage in murder of say, trans people for the crime of existing.
So you know, your unwillingness to understand this basic thing? That’s unfortunately my fucking problem. You privileged white kids always think that a broken system – a demonstraby broken, busted system – does nothing. Guess what: Because the bulk of your peers believe it’s useful, it protects me partially ANYWAY. The status quo means I fear the police. The mobs returning to SElf Help? Means I have to fear everyone who looks like they’re suspicious of me for any reason. And that’s a LOT of people. Oh, and I *STILL* fear the police. Good fucking job. ‘more protectors’ might be useful if they were actually protectors. Notice I haven’t positioned the cops as my protectors, because I am not as naive as you are.
“What do you mean, people like you ? I’m not trying to HURT anyone”
Your intentions != Your effects. Basic fucking lesson of the world.
“No, I was talking about the US actually. Again, Phoenix Jones seems to be the figurehead for superheroes in the USA and is not white.”
‘figurehead’ is not actually code for ‘statistically representative sample’, fyi
“And how is getting MORE protectors throwing OUT something ?”
Like I said, you don’t get it. You’re defining vigilante in the most helpful way to you (Pretty explicitly, given your mini post.). What a vigilante ACTUALLY IS, is an individual who takes up the burden of their own conception of law enforcement, and carries it out extrajudicially (And pretty inevitably, violently). It is BOTH a person who dresses in tights and thinks they’re helping people in need, and the constituents of a crazed mob (Provided the latter are upholding what they feel the law should do, or does do, which guess what…)
Your precious fake superheroes count (I remind you that their leader assaulted and harrassed anarchists over an unsubstantiated bomb threat), as do the Blackshirts or the KKK. If the word ‘vigilante’ only meant ‘people who did it to my satisfaction’, the word would be meaningless, because it wouldn’t describe anyone.
“What?! If I didn’t care, why am I trying to defend these superheroes ? They get enough guff as it is.”
You don’t care taht your precious ‘superheroes’ are worse for folks than the status quo, because they encourage Self Help (pretty explicitly, given that you are including political advocates for the same Self Help). I fucking hope your childish fantasies are worth the mental and physical health of actual people.
Minor correction: The KKK generally don’t engage in vigilantism anymore, preferring political activism in the name of their horribleness. I was referring to the organization historically.
If only she did know how right she was.
Pro tip: Don’t be shithead to your ride back into town.
“Um, you were drinking Max Rager too?”
Best comment ever!!!
Just don’t use utopium at the same time.
Amber has to be careful about going into full on zombie mode.
I’m trying to imagine who would be a good zombie in this universe now thank you
Walky.
“NACHIIIIITOOOOSSS!!”
wait no
“DOROOOTHYYYYYYYYY!!!!”
Different show. You’re thinking of…
…The Walky Dead.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Daddy issues? Megalomania? Rage? Wow, it felt really good to get that off my chest.”
+1 to you, good sir.
More people need to watch that show
Tragic backstories are such a nice ways to avoid responsibility for what you are doing.
This is the kind of tragic backstory Sal’s not interested in. And if she doesn’t have a backflash or something we might never learn why she tried her hand at robbery. I don’t think what we already know about her parents treatment accounts for that, as I said before, to me she looks absolutely desperate during the robbery.
She’d be to proud and see it as avoiding responsibility to tell.
This should have been a reply to Twinkle Toes below
Still works in this thread. I can picture Dorothy lecturing her newly zombified boyfriend: “Yes, you’re a zombie. No, that isn’t fair. But you have a choice now. You can be defined by what’s happened to you, and become a shambling, brain-munching parody of the person you were. Or you can human up and GO TO STUDY GROUP.”
Sal gives no fucks about your tragic backstory.
Which is kinda bullshit, really.
I dunno, Sal has a point. There’s plenty of tragic backstories in the world, but very few of them are decent justification for putting on a mask and being a vigilante, or for knocking up a gas station with a knife.
100% are justification for some serious therapy, though
It is.
Sal frightened Amber. Amber stabbed Sal with a knife.
Amber need MOAH REVENGE!
It’s bullshit, even without the legal consequences that Sal bore and Amber escaped. Revenge is bullshit to begin with, and Amber has already had a generous share anyway. Amber’s raging demand for MOAH REVENGE is unhinged. It has no basis in justice. It makes Amber a danger to herself and others.
Sal is a major part of her backstory. Amber knows this. Amazi-girl dosn’tn want to face it.
Because you read too many comic books. Kickass isn’t a biography, kid.
And that new Mad Max movie did not help either.
Made for a pretty good movie, though.
It’ll be interesting to see how the image in Amber’s mind of Sal as basically the root of all evil conflicts with the fact that she really did save her life. I feel like it’ll be too much for her already nearly shattered psyche.
“Why are you calling me kid? We’re the same damn age!”
because she is dealing with her problems like a child.
I predicted that Sal would care and wouldn’t stay around to find out.
Some might find this admirable, I just find this cruel.
Though, to be honest, even if what Sal said is true, not giving Amber a chance to “Let it our”, to Talk about it, is only going to make matters worse. At least of this was a real world situation.
Keeping stuff bottled up inside for so long is the most unhealthiest thing you can do.
Generally when you’re at the ‘how dare you’ point, you’re not interested in meaningful dialogue. Honestly, given that Amazi-girl flat out attacked her basically unprovoked not too long ago, Sal’s been pretty nice to her.
It may be what would be the healthiest for Amber, but Sal is under no obligation to provide that for her.
It’s like Malaya with Sal. Amber here and Sal there opened with negativity after having previously antagonized the other and tried to act aggrieved when called out on their shit. But Malaya did not owe Sal a therapeutic and comforting narrative of friendship so as to protect her queer-platonic relationship with Marcie. And Sal here does not owe Amber the therapy she needs at her own mental expense of being needled by an antagonistic person who has no intention of thanking her for her aid and every intention of picking a fight.
It’s the worse outcome for Amber, but it is a bed she has made herself by not being ready to have an open dialogue with Sal and start to work through those triggers.
And that’s a thing. Sometimes you have to let things get worse until you can let go of the pride preventing you from being able to do the healthiest thing.
As far as Sal knows that’s the case, but the thing is your forgetting that Sal is the soul root of her trauma. Also talking about it is kind what she was about to do that till Sal just took off again, ya it would have been some sort of verbal assault but it’s still her unloading her issues in attempts to get closer.
And really can you really play the “Your issues are not my problem,” card when your actually the one caused them? Also just because she’s moved on from the past doesn’t mean it’s fair not to give the other person a chance to confrontalk their past when you at least owe her that much. She doesn’t haft to fight her but at least let have a confrontation of some kind so she can move on from her past.
Ya maybe on some ground she isn’t obligated but at least give her something if she wants to be the bigger pearson.
Sal doesn’t really owe her a darn thing. She has no idea who Amber is.
Both Sal and Amber were screwed up kids, whose paths crossed, that’s all.
Sal scared the crap out of her. And Amber stabbed her.
Who owes who an apology?
Sal is working thru her life issues trying to keep the anger at bay.
Amber is, and has, made no attempt to control her rage or talk to someone like Leslie her teacher about it.
Amber has no desire to ‘get closer’ to Sal, just the opposite.
Leslie is not Amber’s teacher (at least there is not a single comic with both of them tagged).
Let’s be real, though. Sal is not the *sole* root of Amber’s trauma. Blaine is. Sal just helped create a crystal clear starting point for the degeneration of Amber into Amazi-Girl.
If Sal were the root of Amber’s problems, Ethan would be her side-kick right now.
That’s exactly it though, Sal DOESN’T KNOW anything about Amber. From her perspective, all Sal sees is a crazy masked vigilante who is angry and being rude for no discernible reason towards her even after Sal saves her life and tells her she did. In this situation a lot of people wouldn’t want to deal with it and would walk away instead of hearing out the other person.
Amber took it pretty badly to hear that “life saving” thing from Sal, but she will probably have to hear the same from Joyce and/or Becky. At this point, she won’t have any excuse to reject it like that.
the problem here with ‘no discernible reason’ is that there actually is a possible one, and given that Sal already brought it up and in general seems to be constantly low key aware of it… she has no reason to assume Amazi-girl isn’t just racist.
….I actually can’t wait to seen this conversation.
If you don’t know, then you have even less of an excuse to walk away before you learn. She was given an opportunity to know, and she refused it. Which fits with her behaviour though.
Heh. Black girl’s got all the responsibility to learn everything, but the white girl doesn’t. ofc.
Sal doesn’t owe her that concern.
But she was the one walked away, had she stayed they BOTH could’ve learned. So she was the one who made that choice.
Yeah, it COULD’VE happened, in the sense that each proton in the constituent atoms that make up the earth could spontaneously and simultaneously cease to exist. Much more likely, Caped White Girl Power Trip would have continued to be an unbearable ass to her. You’re basically saying Sal was supposed to play an emotional lottery (You can’t win if you don’t play!) where the prize was of literally no value to her, because she doesn’t care about Amber, and she has no real incentive to do so, either solely based on the information she has, OR based on an omniscient perspective.
“where the prize was of literally no value to her, because she doesn’t care about Amber,”
That’s my problem with her. Everyone should care enough about everybody else to at least hear them out in my opinion.
Amber isn’t just someone else, though. She’s someone who attacked Sal and her friends for drinking in a parking lot, then proceeded to do a whole bunch of crazy, dangerous shit that could have gotten everyone killed. She has all the proof she needs that Amazi-Girl is just some nutjob she doesn’t need to listen to.
Though to be fair, Sal also got into some physics-breaking herself with Joyce clinging to her back, so maybe she’s not one to talk.
ahahahaha no, nope nope nope, all of my nope, buddy.
Plenty of people will be complete jackasses, and if they start demonstrating this you fucking bail because your sanity is important to you. What you choose to bail on will ultimately say something about you, and that can be okay. I mean, consider what you’re saying: The emotional lottery is now, what, a GOOD idea because you might care about the prize? I likened it to a lotto for a reason – everyone cares about 10 million dollars, you’re still going to lose money on it.
“Plenty of people will be complete jackasses, and if they start demonstrating this you fucking bail because your sanity is important to you. ”
If your sanity is based on how other people act, you have deeper problems than what the other person can give you.
There is NEVER an excuse to not hear anyone out, even if they are completely rotten to the core and just want to abuse you, you still hear them out so that you can KNOW that they are like that. Otherwise you will just end up assuming.
You’re what, a robot, and not a particularly advanced one, to misinterpret that variant of sanity? Because people who have emotions should be able to trace that one out.
Also, lol aat the idea that people are 100% honest about everything, and lol at the idea that you owe the entire world your time. Nah. You should be prepared to be wrong, but as long as you’re willing to own tht possibility, fuck ’em. Also, if your super strict moral code requires people to subject themselves to abuse, reconsider your fucking priorities.
Owing people everything, all the time, is part of what makes us human. I am not aware of any other meaning of the word sanity ?
And it’s only abuse if you don’t want it.
Oh, okay, so I should WANT to be told I’m a spic, a slut, a freak. I should /welcome/ the wonderful dissent that comes when people talk about how I’m ruining families, upending God’s Law, and thta I’m literally as bad as Mao for my political beliefs. I’m /failing my obligations as a human being/ by not /wanting/ to be treated that way, and avoiding contact with people who are building to that same level of abuse as past experience has taught me.
Fuck off, preferably forever.
Actually yes, because if you don’t hear it, how can you do anything about it ?
And you won’t even KNOW if they are those kind of bastards or not, if you don’t hear them out.
Pretty fucking easily. And oh no, I won’t have absolute certainty people are total bastards when they enter ‘quack like a duck’ territory, OH NOES! ITS THE END OF THE WORLD, SOUND THE FUCKING ALARMS.
Seriously, just fuck off.
An angry, concussed person is yelling at you – yeah, that’s a game you win by not playing.
It’s more that no one owes anyone else being an emotional punching bag for their recovery. Even if it would “help” them. Same way that no one owes another person free education on an identity or aid when they are flailing. No one is obligated to take emotional harm just to help someone else.
And it’s hard to blame someone like Sal or Malaya, when Sal picked her fight against her, decides that they don’t need that shit right now when the other person is being antagonistic and hurtful.
And to be fair, I’m speaking from a perspective where I was expected to bottle up my humanity and be responsible for the emotional development of hostile adults because how I am had “done injury upon the family”.
I don’t find it admirable, but I don’t see where the “cruel” comes in. In Sal’s mind, Amazi-Girl just nearly got a whole lot of people hurt/killed, and it was only by the grace of luck that everyone is alive. And she did it to prove something of herself, not wholly of altruistic purposes. From her perspective, why should she “talk about it” with Amazi-Girl? She knows this girl is angry and self-destructive, but she’s seeing it from the end of the tunnel, where now what she sees is how many people could have gotten hurt because of what Amber needs to prove to herself.
And Amazi-Girl/Amber insulted her and condescended to her after Sal /saved her life/ during these actions. Walking away from this is pretty understandable.
Probably because Sal doesn’t give a shit about Amber and doesn’t even want to entertain the thought of having a conversation with a standoffish psycho jerk who is too prideful to even say “Thanks for saving my life”. I for one, have very little sympathy for her.
Amber/AG really has *no* idea that Sal saved her life. It would gall her, if it were true. (she probably thinks Sal dragged her off the side of the road) I don’t think she has thought thru the sequence of events, since she started getting the noggin-dots while on top of the car. Joyce will have the only eyewitness account.
Except it’s worse than that, because Sal straight up tells her she saved her and Amazi-girl’s last conscious memory was probably about to fall off a rope into a truck.
Amber is actively rejecting information that would lead her to changing her opinion about Sal and using her anger to hold fast to her dogma and beliefs about the world. And that’s a dangerous path to walk.
True dat. AG is probably thinking she meant just getting her out of view of the incoming cops (since Sal mentioned doing her a solid).
AG isn’t thinking too clearly right now. Post adrenaline rush + 2 hits in the head, including the one less than a minute ago.
you ether die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Sal destroyed Amazi-girl thoroughly both in saving her and thus preventing the dying a hero part but she also told the truth that Amber is already well on the way toward acts of villainy out of shear blind hatred and a desire for revenge.
Sal is the hero of this story, the protagonist hair should have given that away from the beginning.
“Except it’s worse than that, because Sal straight up tells her she saved her”
Except that she didn’t, at all. The only thing she tells her is that she move her off the road, which could simply mean that Sal just happened upon her unconscious body lying next to the road and dragged her into the woods.
She might not even remember falling off the car, maybe even wondering if Sal was responsible for her black out.
Panel 2 of this comic. “Hell, Ah hadta save yer ass”
After which Amazigirl gets all indignant. “You? You? Save Me? How — How Dare You? HOW DARE YOU?”
This. She says it directly. That she had to save her ass. And Amber responds to it, because she gets indignant about it. And after Sal noted doing her a solid (and it was doing her a solid), that was when Amber pulled out her
oh, you’re a criminal, neener neener neener” line. Sal noting she’s done things to reach out has been responded to consistently with hostility and Amber going on the offensive.
Amber wants to hate Sal and she’s convinced herself she needs to hate Sal in order to hold on to her Amazi-girl alter. She’s still in a lot of ways blaming Sal for a large part of the damage her dad gave to her, which makes sense.
Knowing what I do about abusive parents, it’s really hard to sustain recognizing an abusive parent as the toxic presence they are, so she might view hating and blaming Sal as a bulwark of her emotional separation from her dad. Like, if she recognizes that Sal isn’t a monster, then she might stop viewing her dad as a monster and that would be legitimately, literally dangerous for her as her dad is an emotionally manipulative, physically abusive shitlord.
The problem comes in where Sal is not her dad. Sal was just some kid with a knife who has grown up to be a loner who wants to keep mostly to herself much like Amber.
Still, all she knows that Sal did for her was pull her away, so she would think that referred to “Not getting in trouble with the cops”, which could be even more infuriating to Amazi-Girl, since she might feel that Sal is grouping her in with the very same crowd she believes to be above.
“I’m Amazi-Girl! I don’t need to rescued from the LAW, I AM the law!”
At least in a concussed and confused state of mind.
Sal’s not Amazigirl’s therapist. It’s not her job to stick around and listen to Amazigirl’s tragic backstory. Amazigirl’s been actively hostile to Sal, giving Sal little reason to want to do any of that.
If Amazigirl wants to talk it out she can go to a friend or pay a professional, but she doesn’t get to just enlist random passersby into her therapy sessions. It’s not “cruel” that Sal didn’t offer up free labor to a stranger after already having dragged her unconscious body off the road and stuck around long enough to make sure she woke up.
And what’s more, she’s not fit to be Amber’s therapist. It takes knowledge and skill. If Sal decided to take on Amber’s treatment that would be dangerous and irresponsible.
The most so because (though this is not apparent to Sal) Amber seems to have or be developing dissociative identity disorder, a very serious mental illness that requires specialist treatment.
This. Sal is not employed as a therapist. She’s under no responsibility to caretake Amber’s emotional development.
Amber does not look well at all
I think she’s about to vomit, and perhaps to pass out again.
And this is pretty much exactly how I expected Sal, as someone who has (mostly) come around to healthy adulthood to act vs Amber who…
Amber needs help. Professional help. A lot of it. Not saying Sal doesn’t as well, because she probably could benefit, but Amber is just such a clusterfuck at this point in her life. She could have been fucking killed. And she didn’t seem to even think about that. Her self-destructive behavior is so scary to watch.
Sal saw a lot of shrinks. She hated it, but maybe it did help her. Who know, we don’t really have data on that part.
“She could have been fucking killed. And she didn’t seem to even think about that.”
I think she does. And it’s part of the job. Do you think every cop, fireman, ambulance driver, etc., stop to think “Oh, no, my job could get me killed, I should stop then” ?
No, because they are generally *adults with professional equipment and training*, not idiot teenagers needing to prove something to act against the abuse their father heaped on them.
(Which, yes, IS a large part of Amber’s motivation. Remember the echo when chasing Toedad: “Just some.. stupid punk.. with a gun…”))
I mean, If I saw a non-paramedic go “OH NO THAT PERSON NEEDS A TRACHEOTOMY” and try to *perform* one, fuck yes I would try to stop them, they probably have no freaking clue what they’re doing.
Maybe in general, but just because someone is “official” doesn’t necessarily make them more capable.
In this case it definitely does. Amazigirl has no training to deal with hostage situations or vehicular pursuits or really any of this.
I would bet good money that literally no Indiana police officer would have rode a skateboard while hanging on to the car with a grappling hook.
Police officers have protocols in car chases so that it doesn’t turn into a collision like that. Certainly they don’t fight the driver on top of the roof while throwing caltrops to send the already driverless vehicle out of control. I’m not saying “A good cop wouldn’t do it that way”. I would defy you to find a single local police officer that has ever pulled a stunt like that.
No, but they would’ve responded in other ways, which could’ve ended up just as fatal as this didn’t!
They would probably also have used caltrops, or spikes, put up a roadblock, and, importantly, brought guns to a man-with-a-gun, resulting in a gun fight which is inherently more dangerous than rooftop stunts.
I’m not saying it would DEFINITIVELY been worse, but it could’ve been. And I don’t see that the chances were any better had they gone the official route.
First off, police have maneuvers that they’re taught to try and bring a car to a stop safely like the pit maneuver. Second, we’ve identified Ross’s gun as a single shot rifle. He’d have exactly one chance to fire it off before getting gunned down in a firefight. Sure he might decide to try and use that one shot on Becky but it would be hard to fire a long gun inside a car and Becky would fight back if she saw the police and think that she might have a chance to make it out of the situation alive.
It’s only through sheer luck that this didn’t turn out fatal. Amber could’ve gotten more hurt when she got thrown off the car and hit the other car’s windshield. She could instead have hit the ground in front of the other car and got run over. Then she endangers the life of that other motorist by getting her involved in the chase. A chase that requires the motorist to speed up with both a cracked windshield and AG hanging from the hood of the car both obscuring the motorist’s vision. Then even when AG jumped onto the roof of Ross’ car, how much can she really do? She had caltrops to blow out the tires but then how was she going to deal with an irrational gun-wielding man? This ain’t a comic book where the superhero harmlessly busts through the door window and pulls the driver out of the car one-handed. Instead what happens is that AG gets thrown off the car and WOULD have been hit by the oncoming semi if not for Sal showing up to save her ass.
It’s not her job. It’s her outlet. She has zero formal training and the shit she just pulled was way over the “suicidal” point on the reckless scale. She could not only have gotten herself killed, but also the driver of the car, the semi-truck driver, Becky and her father, and Sal and Joyce.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Sal was right. This was such a fucking stupid move on Amber’s part.
:0
Is Amber on the durgs?
Amber has been dealing with childhood abuse, PTSD, and an anxiety disorder for years by channeling it either into isolation, or self-harm/self-destruction (Amazi-Girl). She has never seemed to learn actual coping techniques for her anger and her other issues. She doesn’t just want Sal to be a by-the-book villain, she absolutely /needs/ her to be, and when Sal won’t play ball, and instead points out what Amber is doing wrong and why she (Sal) does not have time for this shit, Amber is cracking apart, because this is not fitting her internal narrative and her view of right/wrong.
I’ll probably be proven wrong, but it looks like she’s about to have an anxiety attack as the adrenaline wears down and she breaks apart.
Or you know..black out..from a head injury…
Eh. More like a concussion, if we’re going to assume she doesn’t go to a hospital. A black out of an extended period of time after this sort of injury would imply brain damage in need of professional help.
Agree with what you say. But, Amber has been pushed to the breaking point so many times I stopped guessing that ‘this’ is it.
Oh she’s gonna pass out. I hope Amber doesn’t forget this! She deserves to hear it.
Yeah I hope so too.
Mmm… Sal has a good point, but at the same time I disagree with her because there is still a matter of scale. She wanted to prove herself because of racist microaggressions which she experienced in response to having more black features when compared to her “Whiter” and brother – who simply hasn’t had to work as hard for anything. I am not trying to dismiss the complex this would bring, but Amber is a product of direct physical and psychological abuse. Amazigirl is the manifestation of years of being told she is weak and worthless. She had to watch her mother get beaten by her father, and then watched her best friend be threatened with a knife only to be admonished by the very person who was beating her mom. That leaves deep psychological scars.
Sal has become kind of a target for Amber’s aggression, in no small part because of her own actions, but what formed Amazigirl is more complex than that. It can’t just be boiled down to, ‘She wants to prove herself.’
Yeah but Sal knows none of that. Nobody except for Amber knows any of that.
And Ethan to some extent. How much he really knows is unclear. There’s also the question of what, if anything, Mike knows, but Mike would probably be most helpful by not trying to help at all.
Even more, she specifically said she doesn’t care about the sob story. It was just poignant sounding one liner as she motorcycled off into the sunset. Sal’s not gonna spend her evening dissecting how accurate her words were to Amazigirl’s situation and neither should you.
Even moreso because of the context. Keep in mind, Amazigirl has no idea what was driving Sal years ago, and Sal knows this. She’s giving a cryptic allusion to the criminal past she just mentioned without actually communicating anything of substance to Amazigirl.
Yeah, I know. I was more commenting in relation to people who were like, ‘Oh Sal told her off! She is so right!’
Well, no. She isn’t. Because she was a direct contributor to Amber’s trauma. And her experiences were different. She already suffered from anxiety, and adding onto that abuse and feeling like she had failed her best friend compounded that issue. It’s worlds away from what Sal had experienced.
And I think that Sal would care, if she knew what Amber had experienced because of her. If nothing else, Sal understands grudges, and it’s make Amazigirl’s treatment of her less arbitrary.
No offense, but having a shitty life doesn’t outright make being wreckless and self-destructive A-ok. They were somewhat driven by similar things, even if it is on a larger scale. It’s like…say I was in a car accident that paralyzed my siblings. I’d grow up thinking cars need to be built safer. Now say there’s another guy who’s parents were both run down by cars. Now both of us have experienced similar car trauma, but if one of us starts slashing tires and key scratching cars wherever they go, While it’s “Understandable” it’s not “condoned” If Amber’s doing the same shit Sal did that got her sent to a boarding school, we can’t just act like it’s better because she’s been through more shit than Sal. It’s understandable, not Justified.
*Looks for the part where I said Amazigirl was justified in HOW she deals with trauma*
Um… Nope. Can’t find it. Maybe you should try to take a class on reading comprehension?
Yeah I realized I was kinda losing the point as I was typing it as well.
Okay, no, you are straight up wrong here. Reaction to trauma differs wildly. It wouldn’t make any smidgen of sense to compare the two situations unless you were talking about the same person being in both of them, and even then that smidgen would be very small and shitty. Let’s not play trauma olympics here, mmm’kay?
Okay, no, I am not.
Try to find reasons to act high and mighty all you want, but treating all trauma as the same is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of writing a story, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of literary analysis, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of psychology, it is ridiculously stupid. From the standpoint of basic empathy, it is RIDICULOUSLY STUPID.
For the record, since you want to get into a measuring contest here, I am not comparing REACTIONS to trauma. I am comparing the SCALE of trauma and whether Sal’s commentary is accurate, because it comes off as insightful, but fails to hold up under scrutiny. Somehow you have taken that to mean that I am saying Sal is less justified in her anger and rebellion because her trauma wasn’t as severe or direct, and I said no such thing. I never said Sal doesn’t have her demons. Or that her demons aren’t serious. I just said that the statement that Amazigirl is fueled by the same demons as Sal is wrong.
And, for the record, invalidating someone’s experiences by saying that people have it worse is a shitty thing to do, but it’s no better to paint all trauma with a wide brush and claim that no one can acknowledge that some forms of abuse and trauma are more direct and serious. Especially when one party is trying to lecture the other!
Triage exists for a REASON, even in psychology. Because different forms of trauma leave different scars, and it’s vitally important to understand how complex and serious underlying motivations are so that people can be understood and treated. Because two events don’t lead to the same motivation. Don’t leave the same damage. And it’s not invalidating one person to say another has had different experiences, to which they were a part of, and they are reacting to those experiences in a different way.
Don’t lecture me on this, mmm’kay?
Iteresting. Sal’s made peace with her demons. Amber still needs to tame hers, and confronting Sal won’t be as cathartic as she thinks it will.
Storming off on a motorcycle isn’t as cool as you think. Been there, done that.
I don’t see is as storming off so much as refusing to be pulled into the drama of someone who is yelling at you after you saved her life.
I was referring to the hover text.
I would say those are one and the same though, part of an avoidant personality.
Sal never made peace, she still wears gloves to hide the scar.i
Stabbing Sal with a knife wasn’t cathartic. Beating piss and pickhandles out of Blaine wasn’t cathartic. Knuckling Sal and kicking her ribs in isn’t going to be cathartic either. Catharsis is pre-scientific bullshit not supported by evidence.
I know some psychologists and psychiatrists (professional acquaintances) that would disagree with you.
I don’t think Sal really has made peace with her demons. Her behavior, her refusal to make friends other than, sorry I can’t remember her name for some reason, shows antisocial tendencies.
Sal is still as self destructive as anyone, though in a more low keyed way. She only thinks herself better. Makes her arrogant.
Peace can also be an uneasy truce. She became a loner to avoid emotional entanglements, her parents failed to meet her emotional needs and that ended badly. Time at a reform school reinforced the lesson that trusting others is a bad idea. Arrogance and self-confidence are closely tied. She’s learned to rely on herself. As for self destructive, her only self destructive trait seems to be her smoking habit. No drugs, no drinking (or very little, I could have missed seeing her with an occasional beer). She’s adamant about her grades, and seems to want a real future. It’s also interesting that her one confidant is a girl who’s cut off from much of society by the inability to speak. Her story, and their relationship, is intriguing.
Oof, Sal has no more time for dramatic reveals today.
What exactly is Sal threatening to do? Murder Amber? That seems really unlikely for her character.
Beat her savagely? That seems more likely, but still not really conductive to Amber laying off her vigilante persona and Sal is smart enough to realize that.
So is the threat “if you keep doing this, I will do something bad”? I dunno “end you” seems so vague (but maybe that’s the idea)
Reveal her, most likely.
I’m guessing in this context it’s suppossed to mean something more along the lines of “drag you to the campus police.”
She’s had Amazi-Girl helpless twice now, and still hasn’t yanked off the mask or done any sort of identity revelation.
So she could well be talking about a metaphorical end; kick Amber’s ass, yank the mask off while she’s down and expose her.
Nothing really. She’s just quoting a cool and ominous line from a TV show.
Handsome Jack: This is such crap. Amazi-Girl is the HERO and Sal is the VILLAIN. That’s all that matters.
Hah !
“Bandits ! They’re all baaaaandits !”
There is also the issue that Amber might have internal injuries and a concussion.
SAL YOU DO NOT LEAVE SOMEONE WITH A CONCUSSION AND POSSIBLE SPINE/NECK INJURIES.
she does if she wants to give Amazi-Girl the dignity of dying where she wants vs. surrounded by police
I guess?
But we were obviously told help is on the way. Amazi-girl is going to have HER first run-in with the judgmental side of the law.
Possible skull fractures and a possible intracranial haemorrhage, too.
Call me a fusspot if you will: I think Amber needs an ambulance ride to the ER.
I might if she’s aggressive, Violent, and apparently mentally unhinged. And somewhat rude on top of all that.
I’m guessing Sal will tell Joyce about AG being behind the trees, and that she can see to her when the cops are gone, or something. I’m still wondering if Maggie-red-car will look for her, out of curiosity, and end up helping her.
Oooh a one-time sidekick story. That could be fun. Red’s also a person independant from any other plot line, which could make her easier to talk to.
Sal just Batman’d Amazi-Girl.
Alright Amber, don’t die on the spot next to a tree.
Not sure if this is a Bullseye or just Close Enough to Count, but hopefully it’ll prompt Amber to try a healthier way to deal with things, and seek whatever help she needs to get on that path, either way.
She doesn’t know any other path, and can’t fathom not doing anything all by herself.
Sadly, you’re probably right.
*mic drop*
*mike drop*
fucking TOLD, oh man. Sal, i love ya. Amazing how amber in panel three is literally like “how DARE you save me from ending up a bloody smear on the front of a truck! How dare you!!”
I was just remembering the comic where Amber tells Ethan that Sal is at the same uni and Ethan basically tells her to let it go, that they have changed. That along with this strip sort of makes me feel angry at Amber for holding Sal responsible. My guess is that if the Sal thing hadn’t happened, there would’ve been another event that would trigger Amber’s response.
It’ll be really interesting what happens from now with these two characters.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/same-person/
Spent a while looking for it so I thought I’d share the link
Wow, thanks!
I’m thinking Sal’s backstory is more than just her being a bored middle class girl who had to deal with racism and not measuring up to her parent’s expectations.
I’m excited to find out more.
Sal robbed a grocery store with a knife when she was 13. Ethan had taken Amber to that same store and was encouraging her to be self sufficient going out.
Then the robbery took place. When Ambers father came to get her, he ridiculed her for acting so afraid of a ‘a punk kid with a knife’.
Amber went ballistic and raced to the car where Sal was in handcuffs. She grabbed the knife (somehow) and drove it thru Sal’s hand. Which is why Sal always wears gloves now.
Sal was shipped off to a ‘private school/reformatory’ until she graduated.
It is more than not living up to her parents expectations. Her mother literally can’t see her if Walky is in the room. Her father is ‘gently disapproving’.
She is far more than a bored middle class girl.
I meant WHY.
I read the comic- I’m aware of her past. But people don’t just do things to do them. Sal has had this bored facade with the occasional blow throughout this whole comic. Yes we’ve seen her rob a store. yes we’re given the notion that she can handle herself and then some.
Yes what you listed how she feels now and the aftermath of what’s she’s done- but pretty much nothing on before the act.
So why is the question.
We know Amber’s drive and reasons.
What about sal?
How did she get to the point of robbing a store and getting shipped off to boarding school.
She couldn’t have needed the money.
I doubt she did it because she was a bored middle class girl- though with as little as we’re given it’s easy to jump to that conclusion [not that I’ve ever really believed it but it’s an easy conclusion to jump to].
So why?
That’s what I’m excited to find out
We do know more than “bored middleclass girl”. Idon’tcarenomore already said it very well: “Her mother literally can’t see her if Walky is in the room. Her father is ‘gently disapproving’.”
That shit is deeply damaging. Being constantly told that you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy enough, is not healthy. Even Walky agrees that their parents are overbearing. We hear that their mother has already decided on Walky’s future (not telecommunications, but premed). Someone who decides for her kids in that way, what will she do with the kid she has decided never measured up? Today, she ignores Sal. But I do wonder how she acted when she still saw a chance to mold Sal into something worthwhile. In front of strangers, she was judgmental and insistent on good manners. What did she say to Sal in private?
I have very little sympathy for Mrs Walkerton. Hers is an insidious, almost invisible kind of abuse, and its victims do indeed often get written off as “bored middleclass kids” because hey, it’s not like your parents beat you or anything. No, they just made their love contingent on achievements and behaviors that you were just not able to deliver. But who needs parental love, anyway?
It’s sometimes even worse. They make their love contingent on achievements that they ignore when you do deliver them.
… and then they wonder why you aren’t doing more with your life …
The original canon says she robbed not only one, but two convenience stores.
Original canon? Has it been changed?
(I assume there was an earlier robbery where she was successfull in escaping at the very least, and probably didn’t end up as a standoff with her holding a hostage with a knife)
Amber really needs to invest in some Krav-Maga classes.
Her dad enrolled her in self defense classes after the incident with Sal instead of getting her some therapy. Learning some other form of martial art isn’t gonna help anything. What she needs is therapy.
I wouldn’t call Krav Maga a martial art, but your point is well taken.
To fight beastly things, Amber became the beast herself.
Man this is just fueling the fire, now I really need to see this go down even though I know its not a good thing if it does but I want it.
But unnecessary violence bad but…..
So this comment is coming a bit late, but
During “Up All Night to Get Vengeance”, why didn’t Amber just say to Sal, “Hey, you threatened my friend and I years ago with a knife! Not cool!”?
She presumed that her identity would be revealed in the newspaper the next day, so it’s not like she needed to keep anything secret.
I mean, there’s making dumb college mistakes, and then there’s not pressing the proverbial Easy Button when it’s staring you in the face for five minutes.
The Eternal Dilemma of “If YOU don’t know why you have to apologize to me, I’M not going to tell you!”
It’s hardly a college kid error. Grown-ass fucking adults still do it.
I just feel like making a reveal like that is something one would be itching to do in that situation, just to see the reaction on the “villain”‘s face.
Amber IS trying to reveal the truth in panel 3. Sal cuts her off and says she doesn’t care.
What ‘reveal’? Sal already knows that she robbed convenience stores with a knife when she was thirteen, and that some terrified kid cowered during he last robbery and then knifed her after she was arrested. The Big Reveal is going to be a very dull surprise.
“Oh. That was you, was it?” What else ya gonna say?
But she doesn’t know that she’s personally responsible for the tragic backstory she’s saying she doesn’t care to hear.
She isn’t. Blaine is.
And she doesn’t know Amber O’Malley. She knows that the girl who stabbed her is out there somewhere. Does it matter to her who it is?
“That kid who got frightened in your last robbery and who stabbed you after you were arrest! That was ME!” “Oh really? I knew it had to be someone. You, huh? Fancy that!”
Amber blaming Sal for anything significant is bullshit. Sal frightened Amber without even realising she was present. Amber took her revenge by knifing Sal while she was defenceless. Then she tried to get more revenge by beating Sal up in a parking lot. And now she is violently angry that Sal saved her life at risk of death, injury, and legal consequences. And she wants more revenge. That is way, way out of proportion to anything that Sal did. Sal didn’t gun Amber’s parents down in front of her eyes. She just frightened her. Inadvertently. Amber stabbing Sal was already a grossly excessive and unnecessary reaction.
We’re all sympathetic to Amber because we sympathise about the shitty life her shithead father gave her, and we identify with smart kids in dull classes, and we think she looks hot in the yellow dungarees. But when she blames anything significant on Sal she’s way off the beam.
Missing close italics tag in there somewhere. Sorry.
And what reaction do you think that would have? Do you think Sal’s going to break down in tears and apologise to the girl she didn’t even look at during the robbery who then stabbed her after she’d been arrested and restrained?
Yeah cuz Amazi-girl would totally admit “Hey remember that blubbering crazy mess at the convenience store? That was me”
Amazi-Girl looks kind of like a muppet in panel 3. Unless it’s just me.
How Dare you!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
CAN’T UNSEE
Mic dropped so hard it caused an extinction level event
Sal nuked the mic from orbit. Just to be sure.
So that’s why we don’t see Dina …
HOW
IS 
DINA 
???
Dina who?
She’s fine why wouldn’t she be? All Ross did was toss her off him and leave.
TELL IT LIKE IT IS, SAL!
I feel for Amber. I really do. But she needs to get some help before she gets herself or somebody else killed. Amazigirl is NOT a healthy coping mechanism, even if she does get to wear a rad costume and run around on roofs.
I wonder if the “shoulds” make it easier for Amber to commit amazing stunts, but also make it really hard to take the easier course of action. And by that, I mean, her dad slammed her with lots of “shoulds” growing up. How a person should act. How her meekness was bad. How she wasn’t strong enough. How she should have done this to prevent something bad or disappointing him.
An impossible standard of perfection.
And now, she’s escaped him, but is still haunted by those expectations of perfection, now mixing with her DID and self-loathing to produce where Amazi-girl is going these days. Someone who can’t fail. Not just, who doesn’t want to fail, but feels it would be a failure to herself to not succeed in her goal and to complete that goal flawlessly.
And so, she throws herself into danger but does so without a net and if she gets injured or killed, who cares because she’s succeeded. She does better in the stunts, because she’s not afraid of fucking up, and puts her all in. But she opens herself for deeper physical and emotional pain on an already weathered psyche.
Sal, you have /no/ idea. Which likely makes that hit all the harder for AG.
Sal might be right, but would her intervention be successful? What was her plan other than riding off to intercept? How effective would that be? And the only thing different about Sal is she’s not robbing convenience stores for attention anymore. She’s still pointlessly rebelling against everything.
And doing her homework.
Amber was going to reveal the dramatic origin of how Sal killed her parents in an alley! However, Sal basically said, “Yeah, I don’t care why you hate me. You really need to get some therapy.” In an university of people who indulge her comic book fantasy, Sal completely ignores it and refuses to play by the genre.
Yep. The campus in general, Dorothy, and Danny are rather encouraging the delusion, aren’t they?
The fact that Dotty goes gaga over a vigilante is one of the few black marks she’s got in my book, actually!
She’ll need a better line on due process to get my vote!
And, of course, she had plenty of time to develop one. It seems like her time to run just keeps getting later and later.
Well, she can’t run for 17 years. I imagine that by the time she gets to Harvard Law, she’ll be unenamored with vigilantism. Keep in mind, at most she’s in the middle of one survey course, and she’s still a kid, if a smart one. The ways in which Self Help has gone wrong are not going to have been a focus of her courses, nd the rule of law is not something THAT solidly enshrined in the USA to start with (There /are/ reasons we are more in love with superhero comics and stories than most).
I bet if you asked Dorothy about the state’s powers, she could tell you why this shit was wrong, she just hasn’t really critically thought about a vigilante yet. All of the Dumbs make mistakes, because, well, everyone does. What matters is what comes next.
No argument. I believed the most extraordinary things when I was that age.
I was making a little joke about how the operation of webcomic time has pushed Dottie’s run back. There was a time when I thought she’d be eligible for the 2028 race and plausible by 2044. Now it seems like she can’t possibly run until 2032 and doesn’t have a hope until 2036.
Meanwhile, I’ll more likely than not be dead by 2025, when Dotty is still a freshman.
…oh right. comic book time. oh god we’re going to be dead and buried and WIllis will hve passed the comic onto a child.
Don’t forget Dina.
… hey, everyone whose name starts with a “D” knows about and tacitly supports Amazi-Girl. What’s up with that?
Amazi-Girl is awesome and wonderful to everyone but Sal, who finds her a petty bully. Mostly because Amber is a petty bully to Sal since Sal refuses to be evil.
If this little adventure had ended in a realistic fashion, I don’t think AG would have been awesome or wonderful to anyone.
Actually, I think she would have been kinda gross, TBH.
Intriguing!
Mind you, I’m not sure that if I were playing the superhero I would find a reaction like Dina’s to be encouraging, exactly. More like deflating.
I guess the important question is, “Does Deborah support Amazi Girl?”
Daisy?
Yup, because they’re both making assumptions on why she does what she does.
I also can’t help but think of the Wrath of Khan. “Now, I leave you as you left me Amazi-Girl….BURIED ALIVE.”
Or, well, abandoned in the woods.
Sigh… It stinks when your arch-nemesis saves your arse. It stinks even worse when they don’t even know they’re supposed to be your arch nemesis. It REALLY stinks when they’re reasonable to you. It TOTALLY reeks when they compare you to them.
Goddamn, I just really love Sal a lot. The ‘reformed rebel’ (but at their heart still totally a rebel, but now channelling their rebel nature into doing good) is one of my favorite character types. Plus she has that badass motorcycle. Which helps
She feels so mature, well, when it’s not about Marcie or her brother.
“Can’t… fail… anyone… EVER!”
That sums up Amber more than anything else. Save the girl in trouble? Stop somethign evil from happening? No, it’s “I can’t fail them! I can’t be the one to fail! Me!” me! HOW DARE THIS EVIL PERSON HELP OUT I HATE YOU!”
Amber will not be satisfied until Sal reveals her true nature and murders someone.
And will be driven to murder herself when Sal continues to not recognize her, despite how many “You made me this way” hints she drops (while never actually just telling Sal where she knows her from).
What are the chances of Amber developing an alter who does the things she and Amazi-Girl need Sal to do?
And despite noting that Amber is on a bad path, I know intimately how easy it is to get on that path. To dump a lot of pressure on an alter to fix everything and be perfect “or else badness”. To treat an alter like a toxic dumping ground for negative emotions. To feed your self-destructive tendencies, but view it as helping those around you. And to think of anger as some kind of infection.
I don’t know if Amber will have some of the realizations I did way back when, but I suspect it will take much more than this to really get her analyzing things and working for her best mental health (and it doesn’t mean she necessarily needs to hang up the superheroine boots for good).
tbqh, if we want to taalk needs or shoulds from a remotely realistic point of view, she could be the picture of mental health and she would STILL need to hang the damn things up.
That would end… poorly.
Trying to shut down what an alter sees as a core part of itself or trying to eliminate its presence is a good way to create a fully disassociated alter, one with trust issues surrounding integration. It’s why the old method of treating DID was so counter-productive. Amber may need the boots for her own health, but there’s ways to do it that aren’t going to feed these bad roads and self-destructive tendencies. (Using it for kink like she does with Danny is actually not a bad method honestly, though she probably doesn’t want to try and force the Amber personality to be celibate).
Honestly, what she needs most these days is to get the alters talking and stop viewing them as needing separate emotional realities and clothing-triggered separations of self.
Yeaaaaaahhhh I kinda put therapy beneath ‘not getting me and people like me murdered’ on the hierarchy of needs. Even if Amber weren’t picking shitty targets, she encourages others to take things into their own hands. That ends worse than cops do; Zimmerman’s extended history of harrassing black people culminating in murder is an example of Self Help that got on the national news. I really don’t care that she needs it to get better. I really, truly, don’t. Even if Amber were doing everything right (And she isn’t, even where Sal OR Blaine isn’t involved), she encourages Self Help.
Sal’s gotta be great at projecting her voice if Amazigirl can hear her facing away from her with a helmet on.
While Sal got the last word here, and rightly is the voice of reason over the reckless crazy lady in a costume, I still feel she’s getting off too easy for some reason. Odd.
Correction. I just realized the reason it seems off. It makes it seems like Sal has had her big important epiphany but it all happened ‘off screen’ it feels ‘unearned’ I guess.
What big important epiphany? Sal’s been reformed for years before the story even started.
Exactly, everything people try to throw in Sal’s face she’s paid the price for already.
None of which we saw. Hence her moral high ground feeling undeserved. Whether it is or is not is another question entirely but how a story is told is as important as what the story is telling.
In other words it’s not that it makes Sal wrong. It’s that it makes her less interesting.
Personally Sals attitude really grinds my gears, she really thinks she knows everything and her word is law
I’d love to see AG (when healed up) give Sal a richly deserved ass whooping as it may just take Sals attitude of “I’m a big bad ass and I can take anyone down” down a notch or two
We’ve seen AG take on and beat down bigger, stronger opponents and all we’ve seen Sal do is take down Malaya
Ah, hummm.
Sal is horrible yup, she saved Ambers ass, then got her away from the road so she wouldn’t be outted to the cops and possible face charges for what she did.
Sal woke her up and got her talking to see if she was okay.
For this, Amber screams at her.
Actually, Sal is right. She does know everything here that she needs to know. She knows Amber is acting out of rage, same as she did at one time. Sal is still working thru it, and is smart enough to know that she can’t tell Amber a damn thing -Amber doesn’t want to hear anything right now.
That’s what Sal did wrong, though. She should have just left Amber to be picked up by the cops. It would have prevented whatever tragedy she’s inevitably going to cause.
Sals calling out AG for what potentially could have happened but, potentially, Sal could have caused almost as big a accident by her extremely reckless driving
Potentially bad things could have happened to Becky but what did happen is AG stopped Ross and who exactly is Sal to tell everyone how to act? She went to a catholic boarding school, can’t handle her alcohol and is a thoroughly unpleasant person so before she starts doling out advice and threats she should take a big, long look in the mirror and sort that person out first
The only reason she had to drive recklessly was to prevent the tragedy that AG almost caused.
AG stopped Ross, but in a really dangerous fashion, and unnecessarily—if she hadn’t been there, know what would have happened? The cops would have stopped Ross. He fired a gun on a campus; they’re not just going to let that go, and Joyce could have given them all the information they needed to know and more about who he was, where he was going, and why he was doing it.
Maybe it would have taken until the next day or two, but the cops would have handled it.
Almost but didn’t cause a tragedy like Sal almost but didn’t cause a tragedy. The cops might have stopped Ross or the cops might have opened fire on Ross or the cops might not have found Ross because Ross might not have gone home or on being surrounded by the cops Ross might have shot Becky we simply don’t know what might have happened so maybe the cops might have handled it but maybe the cops wouldn’t have
Sal is a child herself yet she calls others kid why? Because she rides a motorbike and smokes? Well she must be so mature then which she shows by telling someone all about themselves but refusing to listen when the person in question wants to explain
Okay, listen – there is ‘could have caused an accident’ and then there is ‘actually already literally caused an accident that only didn’t result in horrible tragedy due to a) Sal and b) a lot of dumb luck’. Have you missed the overturned car (and the /gag/ of Becky being miraculously unharmed)? Have you missed the truck? Have you missed Sal catching her in midair?
There is nothing ‘potential’ about this situation.
The ONLY reason this is only a “potential” danger if they had called the cops, is because they DIDN’T.
It was ONLY bad luck that escalated the situation, if she hadn’t been spotted in the mirror, if Ross hadn’t tried to kill her, etc.
Yet, this is the only course of action we have right now.
The potential for catastrophe was even larger if Amazi-Girl hadn’t intervened, and it scares me a bit that so many here can’t see that.
Both of those things were inevitable? She was hitched on a skateboard to the back of his car. Drivers look into the rearview mirrors as a regular part of driving and she was way visible and out of place back there.
He was going to try to kill her. That’s why he had the gun.
It’s not “Bad Luck” to be seen when you’re plainly visible somewhere he absolutely has to look. It’s not “Bad Luck” for the gunman to try and kill you when you try to stop him.
Sal wasn’t wakeboarding behind a car, jumping from car to car, throwing tacks around on a highway, or messing with dangerously unstable guys with guns. Sal wouldn’t have done anything *at all* if Amber hadn’t basically forced the issue—if Sal hadn’t done what she did, there would have been unsightly splatter marks all over the highway, causing a real PITA for the city’s sanitation department. What Amber did, OTOH, in real life would have at the least caused severe injuries and/or deaths, and at the worst a giant pile up causing injuries to other drivers on the road who had nothing to do with the whole ordeal.
Remember what I said about Joyce being a witness? She knows where Ross lives. So Ross can go right on home and the cops can catch up to him at their leisure. He *would* have been caught, no question. Anyway, however you look at it, if I have to choose between the cops and an insane 18-year-old, I think I’d rather trust the cops. What Amber did would *never* have worked the way it did in real life. I also think it’s pretty unlikely Ross would have shot Becky—that would have put a crimp in his plan to straight-ize her. Other people that stood in his way, like Dina or Amber, were much more at risk of that.
Sal isn’t the most mature person around, no. However, *in this situation*, Amber is making Joyce look mature. She’s basically on a whole other planet.
Oh, and to expand a bit on the “Ross might have shot Becky” thing—Becky had managed to talk down Ross’s gun-crazy. Who turned it back on? Amber. Plenty of ways *that* could have gone wrong. Nice job!
Er, hello? Making noises about killing anyone who might try to take her back? If the cops caught him, his life at the very least was forfeit – not that I have any issues with that, but he might have taken people with him. Besides, he might have dropped off Rebecca with the reprogrammers by then.
He almost took people with him as it was. Probably would have, in real life.
Anywhere he dropped Becky off, the cops could take her back out of, since the kidnapping was, y’know, illegal.
I was about to commend Sal’s wisdom, but the commenters reminded me that Amazi-girl had actually tried to tell her about their connection a while ago. And Sal just disregarded it, and continues to disregard it, even as she involves herself in the situation.
This is the same avoiding-other-people pattern as when earlier today she blew off the advice to make other friends. Sal pointedly avoids human contact, and while in this situation she’s in the right by a landslide, in general, she could have handled this even better – and she really hasn’t gotten over all her demons.
This comment was meant to go at the end, not here
As for who Sal is to tell Amber how to act—she’s a *sane person*, and Amber’s behavior is extremely dangerous.
Strangely enough I like Sal. What I am not too fond of is all this dumping on Amazi-Girl for having the guts to stop something bad from happening. Bad things happen all the time and people complain about no one doing anything. Well Amazi-Girl did something and now Sal gets a chorus of people to back her up because some of the tactics she used were reckless. And what was Sal’s plan? Could she have rescued Becky? Would she have rescued Becky if Joyce had not demanded it?
I’m similar in that I think Sal has really good points and perspective here and that Amazi-girl does deserve props for lucking into probably the only option that led to no one getting shot (and you’re right on what was Sal’s plan. At best they would have just followed him to his home and confronted him there for Round 2 of hostage theatre or risked some bigger problem on the road through dangerous driving.) And Sal is right that Amazi-girl’s plan relied on a lot of luck to not kill anyone. I mean, tacks on a highway?
Amazi-girl definitely deserves credit for saving the day. It’s the way she’s done it that signals more a bad road for Amazi-girl with regards to her self-destructive tendencies and how she’s working against her own mental health.
It’s a whole mess honestly. And yeah, it’s kind of awkward seeing the few comments that are more along the lines of “Amber is crazy, why is she even allowed to do things” when I share the same mental illness as her.
I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that you probably don’t deal with the mental illness by being a vigilante and trying all kinds of impossible James Bond stunts that are likely to turn a hostage situation into a dead hostage—and dead you—situation, so I wouldn’t take the parallel too seriously.
It’s not just that she has a mental illness. It’s that she deals with it in such an incredibly bad way.
She is a bit hypocritical. Also it would be awesome if someone like Joyce or Dina took out Sal (anyone generally perceived as weak) so that Sal will finally realize that smoking and owning a motorcycle doesn’t make you tough. It makes you addicted to tabbaco and gives you helmet hair. I do feel that Joyce will eventually leave both Sal and Amber behind, because she’s willing to grow while they won’t.
Well Sal likes helmet her. They don’t curl thanks to it !
hairs*
The deepest cuts are the ones you make by accident.
I hope AG can get over herself and actually -hear- everything Sal just said. Please make it so.
Aaand I didn’t think I could love Sal any more than I already do, but there it is. XD Well, I’m not too sure about the “I will end you” threat, but other than that.
Well we are less than 24 hours from finding out who was in the ambulance in the preview. I think ToeJam is a prime candidate, but we could also have AG or Dina, whom we haven’t seen since some time in October RL time.
I bet the dizziness along with Sal’s propensity to spout supervillain lines (“Ah will end you” is right out of a comic book) will not heighten the perceived superhero-nemesis Amber has projected onto herself and Sal. Not at all.
Anyway, even if the delivery was more campy and threatening that I would like, I’m glad someone is telling Amber to stop.
It’s pointless though, cause Amazi-Girl is immune to criticism.
So she is!
I thought “I will end you” was from the TV show Firefly. Was I wrong?
You’re spot on. “If your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.” Just one of many fantastic one-liners from that amazing show (may it RIP).
Google reveals that it was used in Good Will Hunting before.
However a question where it was first used on quora remained unanswered.
Here’s a thing about Sal. She’s not *entirely* wrong… But, she is significantly wrong.
It does matter what’s fueling Amazi-girl, and effectively just saying “get over it” isn’t going to help.
And, to an extent, a very real extent, this animosity Amazi-girl has for Sal is Sal’s fault. Sal did what she did, this is a consequence. Now, Sal doesn’t know that. She might not know if she ever saw Amber without the mask. But, here’s the thing, Sal, actions have consequences that don’t go away just because you’re done being bad.
Sal, if you think that people can just “let go” of the things that hurt them, take off your other glove, look at that hand. Any scar from being stabbed there must be completely gone, because you’ve “let it go”, yes?
If not, these “drop truth and walk away” moves… they’re not dropping truth and walking away. They’re saying what makes you feel superior then getting out before anybody can point out you’re wrong.
Sal, you need to find out… and you need to apologize. And, yes, you need to understand that Amber still might not forgive you and that will be her right. Sometimes, you just don’t get to be in control of things.
She didn’t say anything about letting anything go. She just told Amazigirl not to pull any more stunts that nearly get a lot of people killed.
What’s fuelling Amazi-Girl is years of unrelenting abuse of Amber by her father. Sal’s contribution was trivial.
And dressing up as Amazi-Girl to vent her anger isn’t working. She beat fuck out of Blaine and has only got worse since. A violent confrontation with Sal is not going to work any better.
The irony here is that Sal just got done doing pretty much the same thing that Amazi-Girl did. They were both trying to rescue someone who was in danger, and they both did so in a way that, if things had gone badly, would have resulted in multiple deaths.
I don’t see Sal as having any room to talk here. It’s pretty clear that while she might not be actively committing crimes now, she’s still got a whole heap of her own problems to deal with before she starts telling other people off about theirs.
There is that. They are very similar in their behavior and outlooks. The thing that separates them is that Sal is a little more recovered and so does her best to avoid those death-defying high-stakes stunts when possible, whereas Amber still views those as necessary to life.
Which is probably why Sal is talking a little to herself as she talks to Amber here. After all, she knows from experience exactly what Amber is doing and if not why, then certainly with what combination of self-destruction and anger and desire to help no matter what.
“does her best to avoid those death-defying high-stakes stunts when possible”
*Leaps six feet into the air on her motorcycle in front of a speeding truck to catch Amber with one arm and then make an impossible landing while Joyce is with her*
Why should Sal apologize to Amber? Her actions were but a catalyst, not the cause of Amber’s trauma. That would be the years of abuse provided by her father.
Furthermore, Sal was already detained and under custody when Amber stabbed her. She attacked someone who was not a threat anymore.
Also, the apology, if it were accurate to what actually happened, would be something like “I’m sorry I frightened you during that robbery; I didn’t even know you were there.” I don’t think that Amber would find it satisfactory.
Mind you, I don’t think think that Amber would find any possible apology satisfactory, because she doesn’t want an apology. She wants more revenge. Stabbing Sal wasn’t enough. Knocking her to the kerb and stomping her to death wouldn’t be enough either. She’s going to rage, and rage, and rage, and never stop.
Amber is mentally ill. She is a danger to herself and others. She needs to be treated, and circumstances are sufficient to justify involuntary committal.
Pretty much. Amber can’t and doesn’t want to believe that Sal is anything but a nameless, faceless monster.
They’d better use one of the high security places if they did that – They’d have a canicula of a time holding her anyplace else.
It is not Sal’s job to go out, find the people involved in the robbery, and apologize to them. As AA, which is big on people making amends for their wrongs, pointed out, contacting someone out of the blue whom you harmed greatly might harm them more.
She still doesn’t have a clue Amber and Ethan were her victims then.
To Amber/Amazi-Girl the robbery seems to be the main source of her vigilantism – it’s THE symbol for her helplessness and inability to protect herself and the people loves. Maybe, because everybody agreed what happened there was wrong, whereas deep inside Blaine’s poison still tells her, that he never did anything wrong?
I don’t think Amber has the guts and good sense to go up to Sal and say “hey, that time you tried that robbery, I was there. Let me tell you how horrible it was’ (which I would normally not recommend but we know and if she were able to see what really happened whenever amazigirl met Sal and listen a bit to others about how Sal behaves is that Sal is no longer going round acting out her anger). Unfortunately, this most likely won’t happen.
It’s rather more likely that Ethan, if Amber ever tells him who Sal is, will ask her about it. While Amber still fears her, he doesn’t.
Now there’s an interesting insight into Sal
And Amber just got a BIG kick to the ego and somewhat of a wake-up call
Sorry, Amaziegirl. Sal got the last word in this one
Amber needs to invest in an Amazi-Cycle if she wants to compete.
“We’re not so different, you and I.”
(Severely disappointed that no one else has said that yet.)
All that Sal did to Amber was to rob a store while Amber was in it. That’s common assault if that.
Amber knifed Sal while Sal was defenceless. That’s assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Who owes an apology?
But Amber is not offering an apology. The thought of apologising hasn’t so much as crossed her mind. She wants MOAH REVENGE!, even though she’s already had a generous share, besides which Sal has already been duly punished by the law, and has reformed.
Amber/Amazi-Girl is entirely out of line on this.
Are you reading the same comic I am? I don’t seem a single thing in there about apologies or revenge or anything else.
Yes I am — no need to be snide.
I am also reading the comments, and several commentators have mentioned apologies.
In short, you’re talking about the commenters rather than the comic.
Well, I don’t care if you want to be snide about other commenters, but sauce for the goose; you don’t have much room to complain if someone calls you on it.
Sal owes Amber an apology, her selfish assholery caused Amber years of mental harm.
Glad I sorted that out for you
Are you purposely ignoring the years of abuse Amber received from her father?
Perhaps Sal will beat the crap out of Blaine
A lifetime of psychological abuse by her father — probably physical abuse too — in an environment in which he repeated beat up her mother caused Amber serious mental harm. Sal’s contribution, which amounted to inadvertently frightening her for a few minutes, was trivial.
But it’s the one point she can concentrate on, since it wasn’t from her “autority figure”.
Sure. I understand why Amber is trying to take her rage out on Sal. I just don’t think that is either justified or good mental hygiene.
And I can’t I can’t agree that Sal’s “selfish assholery” caused Amber “years of mental harm”. Not even when the person who suggests it throws in a coda of smug condescension.
Yeah. Sal is the excuse. The inciting incident of disassociation. The proverbial straw on the camel’s back. But that makes her actions no less straw like and puts her under no obligation to put Amber’s mind back together for her.
I’ve checked back. No “probably” about the physical abuse: Amber’s father tortured her and hit her mother, aside from the unrelenting psychological abuse.
Only in the universe where Amber owes an apology for stabbing her through the hand and waltzing away with a clean slate because a white girl committed violence to a black girl.
Sal literally paid her debts to Society in general, and Amber in particular (If only because the latter STABBED HER IN THE FUCKING HAND).
Anyone else noticing that Willis is teasing us with that other fucking glove?
Sal: *stands over Amber’s fallen form* I am Bane and I could kill you but that would merciful. Instead, I simply leave you….broken.
Is she implying that Amazi girl has been taking something to enhance her fighting and running around?
Rage. Lot of rage.
Yup anger and a whole lot of lack of regard for one’s own safety.
I’m guessing she’s comparing Amber to herself when she committed the robberies. They’re doing stupid, violent, insane shit to prove a point and live up to some false standard.
But that’s more of why they did those things. Not how. And she specifically says she doesn’t know why, but knows how she does it.
They’re desperate, lonely and hurt enough to do insane harmful shit in the drive to prove some kind of point to themselves.
But that still falls more into the why, rather than the how.
I really dislike Sal
Also I just found this, on racism and such (panel 3, to be specific)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curbstompings/
Very apposite.
*dances to daft punk*
Through a motorcycle helmet, I think the dialogue should have been. Hmmdhdsmhmhm.
Yeah, I installed a Sena device so I could just hang up on them, instead but, can’t hear or be heard by shit above 35mph.
—————–
Blue 2001 Katana 600. I gave it away when I left.
Frankly, neither of them covered themselves in glory here. The difference is that Amazi-Girl was rescued from near-certain death by someone she hates and fears, and thus has a chance to reexamine herself and her motives for running around in costume, while Sal just ‘proved’ once again that she’s above everyone else, and hasn’t learned a damn thing, as usual.
I don’t think this situation provided any opportunity of growth to Sal. While she could have paid Amazi-girl more attention had she been… healthier in her relation to other people, she definitely doesn’t owe her that, and definitely doens’t have much to gain here.
Sal did a good. Full stop.
Kind of seems like Amber’s the only one who still has stuff to learn from the Amber/Sal connection anyway.
Sal’s moved past this incident. She’s already corrected that behavior. Her problems today are things like “Really clingy friend. Needs to make new friends so it’s not the end of the world when Marcie starts hanging out with somebody new.”
Amber’s the one who’s still stuck on it. Chasing after gunmen while picturing the “Punk with a Knife” from all those years ago. Getting lost in baseless paranoia about how surely Sal’s still up to no good and coming up with excuses to fight her. Excuses that are messing with her personal life. It sounds like Amber didn’t have a problem with under-age drinking before that fight but now she’s getting into fights with her boyfriend over it.
And, like, I don’t fault Amber for that or anything. She experiences traumatic flashbacks whenever she sees Sal, so that’s probably messing with her judgment pretty hard. But if we’re talking about giving Sal an opportunity to learn from this encounter, what would the lesson be? “Ah, guess I need to stop robbing gas stations.”
All of this. Both about the traumas really messing with her judgement and Sal’s real problems. Sal’s still got that rage in her, but is doing well to keep it in check, but that she is doing it with disengagement is making her co-dependent with her friendship and low on emotional support for her struggles. Which is why her moment of reaching out with Joyce was a really big moment for her. It’s connecting with someone who isn’t Marcie and getting entangled with their internal world.
She doesn’t want that to happen as she feels that is a risk and in some ways it is. I mean, she did go back to doing some dangerous riding because of it. But it’s a crucial step for her developing a healthier, more sustainable form of counter-culture introversion.
Any situation can provide the opportunity for growth if you pay the slightest bit of attention. If Sal missed it, that’s on her and nobody else.
When you get right down to it, both Sal and Amazi-Girl did good things here, and both of them made mistakes in the process. The point being, Sal has no room to talk since she just got done doing pretty much what she criticized Amazi-Girl for doing.
I don’t think it’s about glory, either way.
Each person has to recognize and overcome his own problems,
his parents problems.
All, while risking becoming his parents.
If a person can’t help his parents overcome their problems,
at some time, he may have to overcome his parents.
Something tells me that Sal has stormed off in a self-righteous huff a bit too soon. Based on those last couple of panels, I think that Amber is more thoroughly concussed than either of them thought.
By the way, Sal is entirely wrong about what motivates Amazi-Girl. Of course, how could she know the truth. It’s interesting though because it really does explain why she dislikes Amazi-Girl so much. She thinks that it’s a cry for attention, just like her own early-teen stupidity. You can certainly understand why she would consider that a bad road to walk.
Well, we don’t /know/ that it was just a cry for attention back then, and not trying to prove something to the image of an abusive parent in her head…
Which is probably what it was, given what we’ve seen of Linda Walkerton.
You think she dresses like that, calls herself that and spouts one liners because she’s NOT looking for attention?
I don’t think that ‘attention’ comes into it. She’s playing a role as you would expect the role to be played, hoping that it would act as a safety valve.
She’s compensating because Daddy didn’t love her.
Don’t worry, Sal
Wafflehouse and stolen energy drinks have led many a soul astray
It’s going to take a while for those two to get along. But I bet they’ll become besties in the end.
PREDICTION – Dina is somehow involved in Amber getting to safety.
Amazi-girl is about to amazi-hurl…
New OTP!
Amazi-Girl then falls over and dies from internal bleeding.
You’re failing to factor in Dina.
We last saw her on campus. Did you think these woods are anywhere near those woods? The chase took place over more than four miles.
Dina is in no way near to where Amazo is now.
Wowwww.
“We’re more alike than you know”
“We’re one and the same”
“We’re not so different, you and I”
You know, lines like that are almost always delivered by super villains…
In the comics, yeah. In reality, it’s often from one person recognizing an internal struggle in someone that is similar to what they went through.
And that’s the problem, Amazi-girl wants to stay in the simplicity of comics and leave Amber with the messier gray-moral zones, but she’s chosen an arch-villain narrative about just a person. A person who shares a lot of the same mental struggles as herself.
And so Sal wants to use the reality version of it and Amazi-girl wants to just see the comic-book version. And they won’t see eye-to-eye until that discrepancy gets resolved, one way or another.
this was fantastic.
Wait, did Sal remember her? Does AmaziGirl realize this? What is going on???
Sal doesn’t recognize Amber as the girl from the convenience store, and doesn’t care why Amazi-Girl is who she is.
With all the discussion about whether Sal owes Amber anything or which one is right or whatevs, I think we should remember one crucial fact:
The only reason we care about what Sal did is because her victims turned out to be main characters.
….My money’s on Sal becoming the mentor type vigilante to Amazi-girl.
The kind that tells her how to properly do the cape and cowl thing.
Though with all the talk about Amber v. Sal, I don’t think we’ve ever discussed how Ethan should feel about what happened, especially since he was the one who was actually taken hostage.
I dunno, I kind of hope he’s not just “water under the bridge” about it, even though he’s right to be way more concerned about Amber than “some girl.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/same-person/
He seems to be pretty “Water under the bridge” about it. He was mentally healthy when the incident occurred so he’s been over all this for God only knows how long. Doesn’t experience any traumatic flashbacks when he sees Sal. Pretty sure he didn’t even recognize Sal as the girl from that night until Amber pointed it out.
Amber was in a much more fragile mental state on the night of the incident. Then her father spurred her even further, provoking her into some sort of violent breakdown before the night was over. He forewent therapy, choosing instead to put Amber through martial arts classes so she wouldn’t be such a weak embarrassment next time something like that happened. Probably talking about years of her father taking her to these training sessions that implicitly shame her for experiencing the incident. All and all it’s a much bigger deal for her.
Specifically, I meant how Ethan should deal with Sal. I get that he’s a way more emotionally healthy person than Amber, but I don’t think he should be all buddy buddy with Sal since she, you know, took him hostage and threatened to kill him. How do you accept somebody that committed a horrible, violent crime against you?
He’s absolutely right that Sal’s a different person now, but I saw that less as “it’s okay” and more “please stop climbing through windows, Amber. She’s not the Joker.”
Why not? Sal the adult isn’t the same as Sal the kid. Hell, Ethan probably is keeping in mind how he thought he was straight and was a skinny little whelp and had his mother’s love when he was that age and now everything is different, so yeah, why can’t these two different people be civil to each other. He’s not obligated to keep holding a grudge so that Amber feels less alone.
He also probably has the perspective that she was a desperate scared kid flailing out who was summarily arrested while Blaine was the person who emotionally and physically abused her her entire life. I think he understands a little more directly who is the origin of Amber’s darkest ghosts.
I’m not asking him to hold a grudge for Amber’s sake, I’m thinking that if he did hold a grudge against her it would be for threatening to kill him, but he’s putting that aside because he’s way more worried about Amber’s violence than Sal (and Ethan also correctly pointed out how if Sal was the same person she wouldn’t be at IU, so she had to have changed for the better), but either way it was still horrible for him to go through, and it was Sal’s doing. How do you forgive something like that? How do you decide that it was okay for someone to do horrible shit to you?
By understanding her motivations, as stated above, and recognising that she’s still a person and has grown in the last five years.
I guess? I don’t think I get the forgiveness thing. Like, everyone fucks up sometimes, but really vile, awful shit? I don’t know if I could bring myself to look past something like that.
Ethan doesn’t seem to plan on dealing with Sal at all. He hasn’t been all buddy buddy with her. He hasn’t sought her out at all. Since it doesn’t upset him to see Sal walking around he’s totally capable of just passing by her in the hallway without it being a whole thing. Met her at a party recently and didn’t even realize it.
Since Sal being around isn’t a problem for him he’s got better stuff to do than deal with her. The whole “I’m gay” situation has been eating up a lot of his time and energy.
Right, Ethan hasn’t been dealing with Sal at all. What I’m wondering is how he’s going to react to her when he gets involved. There’s a difference between coming to terms with a violent experience and actually coming face to face with your attacker.
He doesn’t plan to get involved. Sal doesn’t really seem to be on the radar for him.
I know he doesn’t plan to get involved, but if he knew that Amber was actually seeking out Sal to attack her, I doubt he’d just allow it to happen. Even if, hypothetically, he did still hate Sal he’d still try to stop Amber because her safety is what’s most important to him.
HOLY SHIT
Look at the FORESHADOWING in this alt-text!
Though, to be fair, it did say “SPOILERS.”
Is saying that no one gets hit by a truck really foreshadowing? I mean the characters are in a continual state of not being hit by a truck
You might have missed this strip (and the one following it).
Still not foreshadowing. Just the authors flat out saying that no one is going to be hit by a truck. You can’t read that strip and then infer that this incident was going to happen.
Amazi-Stool is right. OK, maybe “foreshadowing” isn’t the right word, but especially during this strip, there were a lot of people who thought someone WOULD get hit by a truck. Hence, at the very least it would be a spoiler to say that nobody will get hit by the truck, because during that period it was plausible that somebody would get hit by a truck.
At the time, of course, it didn’t seem like much of a spoiler, but taking it at face value when the truck came would have predicted that AmaziGirl’s attempt to save Becky and Sal’s attempt to save AmaziGirl would not go as horribly wrong as most thought.
If sal really wanted to be the hero she would have taken Amazi-girl to the hospital. that girl doesn’t look like she would last the night
The problem is you assume that Sal wants to be a hero, rather than someone who just does the right thing. Sal dragged Amber to safety, roused her, and only left when Amber demonstrated she was awake and alert enough to immediately try and pick a fight (and probably figures that if she’s alert enough to pick a fight, she’s alert enough to get over to where the cops are and seek medical assistance).
Okay maybe “hero” is a poor choice of words. I meant more along the lines of Sal taking the high road.
Two things I hope to see from this arc:
1. Joyce starts swearing a bit more and maybe stops proselytizing.
2. Someone finally convinces Amber to get some fucking help. And no, I don’t mean a sidekick.
“Do you know why I do this, you —”
“No.”
Would love to know what the next couple of words out of Amber’s mouth were going to be. “You criminal”? “You knife-wielding thief?” In any case I’ll bet it would have revealed that Amazi-Girl knows Sal’s past and, as mild-mannered cowering little Amber who had been pushed up to and over the edge, was the person that stabbed her hand. Maybe not in so many word, but still…
Combine them!
JOYCE: “Amazi-Girl, that rescue was awesome, but, take it from the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit… you really need to get some fucking help.”
Did Sal just give Amazi-Girl the “Not So Different” speech?
But with an implied “but I learned my lesson.”
wow… that is going to mess with Amber for the next year
The next in-universe year or the next real life year? Big difference.
Go easy on Amazi-Girl, folks. She puts the dumb in Dumbing of Age.
No, that’s Danny.
Yeah, its hard not to see that Sal’s been the better helper to Joyce in this story. Amazi-Girl’s could get herself killed from doing shit like this.
Part of me wants to see a picture like the Marvel Comics’ Civil War with Sal on one side and Amazi-Girl on the other.
I figure Danny, Ethan, Dorothy, Dina and Becky would be Team Amazi-Girl and Marcie, Carla, Malaya and possibly Sarah would be Team Sal. Walky and Joyce would kinda be torn in the middle.
The problem with Sal is she thinks shes right and doesn’t consider the possibility she may in fact be wrong. In this storyline she inadvertently she used her sway over Joyce to convince Joyce to not go to the authorities in dealing with her assault: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/assault/
At the very least it would have meant Joyce could have got some much needed counselling but instead Sal just decided what was best for Joyce based on what happened to her
She just turns up and sounds like she knows whats shes talking about (from a very limited world view) and then leaves so as not to deal with any of the aftermath
FWIW and IIRC, Joyce herself didn’t want to go to the authorities because she was worried about her parents taking her away from school. Sal simply agreed with Joyce’s position. It’s not quite fair to list Joyce’s decision as Sal’s fault simply because Sal offered an opinion in line with Joyce’s own.
It was after three strips and Sal expressing her opinions on the matter when Joyce decided she didn’t want to go to the police
It also doesn’t make any difference that Sal though her course of action was the best course which was based on her experience only and nothing really to do with the situation Joyce was in
Another case where the wise, all-knowing Sal stepped into a situation that had nothing to do with her and influenced the situation because she knows best
anonymsly is right. Joyce didn’t want to go to the authorities while Dorothy and Sarah were trying to convince her, when Sal intervened and said that the police would be useless and they’d need to take care of it themselves, and made them realize they never got Ryan’s name.
So she isn’t the cause of why Joyce didn’t go to the cops, but she encouraged it.
Honestly, I think more of an issue with her resentment of authority figures was dissuading Joyce from seeing a therapist about her trauma in and instead speaking to a friend. Sal probably hasn’t had any positive interactions with court ordered therapy determined to figure out why she has the problem, but I think a trained professional would help Joyce more than say Dorothy or Sarah (though that’s ultimately up to Joyce either way).
And she did take note that the group should’ve brought her to the cops first if they really wanted to help her before the drugs wore off. Really it was more Joyce not wanting to get the cops involved.
Who is to say that not going to the cops was the wrong decision? I was trained as a sexual assault victim advocate in 1999 and I’ve literally lost count of how many people I’ve listened to and advocated for. Do you know how many of those people had police officers treat them like they were stupid, slutty, or deserved it? Almost all that called the cops. Do you know how many were actually retraumatized when dealing with the system? A ton. Do you know how many saw successful convictions of their rapists? NOT ONE.
Joyce could get counseling help without going to the authorities. And, if her friends had any idea how bad her PTSD and anxiety is, they would help her find those resources. That’s why Sal told her recently in strip that she needed to talk to someone.
Police aren’t a place of safety or protection for everyone.
Oh SHIT, two side of the same coin! Day and night! Yin and yang! Black and wh- fuck.
It seems strange to me that Sal, of all people, thinks its her place to deal with Amazi-Girl.
Well, clearly she was the only one who could have intervened here, and she recognizes some of her own juvenile mistakes still happening with Amazigirl. Different presentations, but the same motivation (shitty parenting and lack of approval leads to acting out).
She brought her into this world; she can take her out.
Sal isn’t wrong, nothing but truth there. But I kind of hate that it was her who said it. It was needed most definitely but I don’t know, with Sal and Amber it’s like the pot calling the kettle black sort of. She isn’t wrong with Amber. As awesome as it is to play a super hero, this is based in the real world where if you die you won’t come back in the next issue, flying and rotating the world backwards doesn’t reverse time, and having your parents murdered doesn’t mean you can take the law into your own hands. Amber can’t play the hero and if she is going to play one she’s doing it for all the wrong reasons. Which is why yeah Sal did the right thing here, walking away and not hearing it out from Amber because as tragic and traumatic as the past is for her that doesn’t justify the shit that happened now in the PRESENT. That’s like kidnappers and murders who were abused as children and they developed mental disorders and twisted mindsets and that’s the reason behind there madness and yeah I get it, but you’re still a kidnapper. You’re still a murder. That shit your doing is WRONG. But it just bothers me that is was Sal, not because she’s ONE of the reasons for Amber’s current mindset but because everyone seems to think Sal is pristine listerine and is an adult now. In this situation yeah, but Sal hasn’t really made the best decisions, and I don’t mean her knocking over convince stores, I mean some of the stuff she’s doing in the present. She’s in a better place than she was but I don’t think she’s made peace with her demons. I just find it odd that she’s forgotten completely about what happened while it’s permanently engrained into Amber’s mind. Ethan forgot but he at least had a vague remembrance of Sal after meeting Walky. But Sal has just completely blocked it out. I mean I get that she’s moving on with her life and would rather forget the past but to completely block it out? I don’t know it’s weird and probably unhealthy. And then there was the whole Malaya thing; you can hate someone plenty and not escalate things. And her tendency not to get close with people, her unresolved issues toward her parents and their mistreatment toward her, especially her mother. Just… A LOT of underlying issues and I don’t know she’s speaks the truth in other situations as well like with Jason and how he really didn’t help her but then I just thought to myself that, “You thought fucking him in the first place was going to magically get you a better grade.” and it’s just I don’t agree that Sal really is mature in the since people are saying. Yeah she handles her shit a whole better than Amber and she is the bigger person here and even in their last encounter she was but I just don’t think she’s suddenly a better person for being right. I guess after spewing all that I agree with her and her viewpoint but just because her and Amber are two different levels it doesn’t mean Sal is a saint. I guess what brought on all this was the fact that she and Joyce were just speeding down the highway to save Becky and really what were they going to do? It might not have ended up as bad as the crazy ass stunt Amber pulled but really what the fuck were they going to do to stop Becky’s kidnapping? Her father made it clear he wasn’t going to hesitate to “protect” Becky even if it meant shooting Amazi-girl so what would have stopped him from gunning down Sal and Joyce on her bike? I just……………sigh. Sal is right most definitely. Amber needs SERIOUS help and the outlet she’s using obviously isn’t the way to go but I don’t like that it’s Sal that told her like it is because though her shit is semi together she really isn’t the best person to me to be telling anyone shit. Trigger or no trigger.
Protip: The Enter key exists for a reason.
Sal is only 18 right? The only thing that fueled her “years ago” were boxes of grape juice.
Or terrible relationships with her parents. You know, juice or that.
Five years ago is still years ago.
Panel three makes me sad – Amazi is really losing the plot.
She lost it before Amazi-Girl ever existed.
Who was it that called for Amazi-Girl in the First Place?
Let’s say Amazi-Girl gets a call for help, shows up, then acts like Sal and says, I don’t care, this is not my problem, then walks away.
What would everyone think about her then?
Sal is chewing Amber out for trying to help after being asked to help.
What kind of crazy Bike Stunts would Sal have done to stop Ross if Amazi-Girl wasn’t there? With Joyce on the back of her bike and not wearing a helmet?
Personally, I think Sal is arrogant, self-centered and a hypocrite.
Agreed
That was Joyce, via Dorothy.
Joyce also asked Sal. If i remember correctly, she performed neither of the described actions.
I give you the hypocrite. Or in DoA-terms: “You’re not exactly snowwhite, Sal!”
She has been made uncomfortably aware of that for most of her life.
for reference
But Sal intervened to stop AmaziGirl, NOT to help Becky.
She stated that AG would make a real mess of things – which is perhaps justified, AG needs to grow up and up her game if she wants to be a real hero; good intentions and a black/ white view isn’t going to do it. And Sal is perhaps correct that AG’s reasons don’t help because they cloud her judgement.
But Sal was more interested in stopping AG, preaching at her in the above little speech, including a deasth threat (Sal, go fuck yourself), and generally being every bit as self-righteous as AG can be.
But without AG to show up, I’m not convinced Sal would have done anything.
Sal went because Joyce asked her to. Then she got her away from the cops and made sure she was alive to “do her a solid”.
She probably wouldn’t have done anything… because there was no need to, in her eyes. Becky’s kidnapping is a case for the police, not vigilantes.
Sal went because she knew that AG would escalate things, and possibly get someone killed. She only cared about stopping AG for that reason. In many ways, Sal was being quite heroic here. She wasn’t spiteful against AG, she just knew that someone would get hurt. (As it happens, it was AG herself.) Her “preaching” is still coming from a place of protecting others.
And she does have a point… AmaziGirl is constantly trying to prove something. She thinks it’s proving something to Sal… but it’s actually to prove something to her ass of a father. Even though she already beat him up, she’s ALWAYS going to be trying to prove something to him.
If you went back to that robbery, and Amber’s dad didn’t insult and provoke her, she never would have attacked Sal and stabbed her. She had no reason to, because Sal was already being arrested. Sal is not her arch-enemy, even though Amber really wants her to be. She put on the mask to prove something to her father, even though she says she wants nothing to do with him. Sal may have provided the set-up to the trauma that made AmaziGirl, but it was Amber’s dad that was the catalyst for it.
Yes, Sal and AmaziGirl were both “asked” to help by Joyce. That’s why both headed off in pursuit. The argument on that comes down to their methodologies. AmaziGirl was being forceful, and Sal was being reactive. Now, Sal probably wouldn’t have had to do any fancy tricks to stop ToeDad, they just have to follow, and keep following. Because the police would eventually get there, and they would stop his car… and Sal and Joyce would be nearby, so Joyce could get to Becky instantly. Any tricks Sal had to do would be reactive, if Ross pulled the gun on them, or what actually happened, if AmaziGirl was about to be creamed by a Truck.
Sal’s threat is understandable. Frankly, most death threats like that are fairly empty… because unless Sal has taken a life, which I doubt, she won’t do it now. But she would be pissed if AG did recklessly put people’s lives in danger, again… justifiably. So a showdown, beat-em-up, would probably occur… but not death. But she’s pissed that AmaziGirl was reckless. We’ve all been pissed at someone for doing something stupid, even if it didn’t hurt us personally. We’ve all said something to the effect of, “I’ll kill you if you do that again.” Did you mean it? Not literally… but you had anger, and you were expressing it.
Willis clearly knows what makes the comic book hero and villain setup so compelling. They’re driven by the same thing deep down but they can’t reconcile their beliefs; that’s great material.
Just want to say congrats on continuing to support the perception:
“Sal is so cooooool!”
Which you could easily have lost as we got to know her better. But you didn’t.
They’re the same. But different.
But the same.
(But different.)
I’m not convinced Sal has much grounds to be smug. The “look at me, I’m so cool” attitude gets really tiring really fast.
And they are at most within few years of each other in age, so calling her ‘kid’ is not just condescending, it’s also inappropriate.
They’re the same age.
“Trauma olympics”. Easy button”. I
I LOVE
you guys…
WTF??
And when I find myself nodding in agreement with some informed and insightful post, it’s usually Agemegos or Cerberus. Kudos to you folks!
Oh, those second and third panels are so fucking delicious. Amber’s such a piece of trash. She’s almost horrible enough that I’m dissapointed she didn’t cry in the third panel, but I’m not quite that sadistic about her yet. We’ll probably get there eventually, though. She’s one of the very few characters that has yet to show any inkling to becoming a better person.
The most appropriate grav for that comment ever.
Hear that? That’s Chekov’s gun chambering a new round. There’s a blowup between the two to come.
Also, is it just me or do I notice tears in that blood.
One thing I don´t like about what Sal has just said is “… I will end you (if you continue to do this)”, taking things almost to a personal level. Well, it´s consistent in a way (she won´t snitch a word to the police or authorities, just because she doesn´t trust them), in a sense it´s on her own code of morals, but still, this isn´t the best solution. I would have preferred that another person, perhaps Ethan, would have confronted AG/Amber about this. Heck, even a local sheriff or someone from the ambulance that´s about to come. Sal´s lack of interest just killed the little glimpse of catharsis almost breaking out from AG´s mouth in panel three. Sal does have little patience, and she isn´t as mature as she thinks she is. She won´t hear out “a complete stranger”, but surely, has time to say her piece, shut her off and go away in a motorcicle. Yeah, right. Sal´s inexperience in the ways of life is only marginally lesser than Amber´s, and no, that´s no good. They both are rock bottom still, one way or another. And that´s why there´s still room to things going sour. Both girl´s won´t make compromises in their ways.
WAIT. Sal said she knows *how* Amazigirl is doing this, not why. She doesn’t know or care why.
Is Amazigirl taking steroids?
Or, you know, some other kind of drug that makes you all crazy strong and fast?
Anger.
I think she just knows that AmaziGirl has something to prove. Just like Sal, always felt like she had something to prove, that’s why she acted out and became a juvenille delinquent. It’s how they directed their anger, and while one went crime, the other went vigilante… they do share that in common.
Meth confirmed.
I always knew there was a reason for Sal wearing Cobra colors.
God, is there anything more obnoxious than a teenager/young adult addressing another teenager/young adult as “kid”?